HOURS  WITH  MMOUS 
RARISIANS 

STUART  HENRY 


CHICAGO 
MDCCCXCVII- 


HOURS  WITH  FAMOUS 
PARISIANS 


4    't    6&M- ;" 

/£, 
V  /'o     L-+'*.*-  <^*'    y*f&~    / (Tr* 

Hours  With  Famous 
Parisians 


BY 

STUART    HENRY 

AUTHOR  OF  "PARIS  DATS  AND  EVEXIKCS.' 


CHICAGO 

WAY   AND   WILLIAMS 
1897 


COPYRIGHT 

WAY  AND  WILLIAMS 

1897 


TO 

G.  J.  H. 


NOTE. 

SEVERAL  OF  THESE  SKETCHES  HAVE  APPEARED 
IN    LONDON    AND    NEW    YORK    PERIODICALS. 


CONTENTS. 

WRITERS. 

PACK 

I.     Madame  Adam     -  1 1 

II.     M.  Sardou  21 

III.  M.  Zola        -  27 

IV.  M.  Daudet       -  37 
V.     M.  Coppe"e  -      79 

VI.     Paul  Verlaine  71 

VII.     M.  Catulle  Mendls  -                55 

VIII.      M.  Anatole  France  89 

IX.     M.  Jules  Lemaitre  -      97 

X.     M.  Huysmans  113 

XI.     M.  Drumont  -     119 

XII.     M.  Hervieu      -  125 

XIII.  M.  Henri  de  Re"gnier  -     143 

XIV.  M.  Marcel  -  Prdvost  153 

PEOPLE  OF  THE  STAGE. 

XV.     Madame  Bernhardt  -         -     159 

XVI.     M.  Mounet  Sully     -  169 

XVII.     M.  Coquelin  Cadet  -          -     177 


Contents. 

PAGE 

XVIII.     Mademoiselle  Reichenberg  187 

XIX.     Yvette  Guilbert  *99 

PAINTERS  AND  COMPOSERS. 

XX.     M.  Bouguereau  2I1 

XXI.     M.  Henner  217 

XXII.     M.  Massenet  233 


Madame  Adam 


Madame  Adam 

It  is  not  true  that  Madame  Adam  is  the 
only  man  in  France.  The  compliment 
would  be  magnificent  for  her,  but  rather 
whimsical. 

Nevertheless,  she  is  more  masculine 
(using  the  word  in  a  stalwart  sense)  than 
most  of  the  Frenchmen  you  meet  in  Paris. 
I  scarcely  know  a  Parisian  who  is  equipped 
with  such  a  virile  bearing.  She  is  an  ac- 
tive, brusque,  business  person,  resolute, 
accustomed  to  giving  and  taking  hard 
blows,  and  to  deciding  daily  a  score  of  im- 
portant questions  on  the  spur  of  the  mo- 
ment. She  was  born  to  command,  and 
carries  on,  with  unusual  administrative 
ability,  two  or  three  secular  enterprises. 
Among  them  is  the  Nouvelle  Revue. 

Madame  Adam's  photograph,  with  which 
the  world  at  large  is  familiar,  does  not 


12  Madame  Adam 

offer  a  correct  impression  of  her  as  she  is 
to  be  seen  and  known  to-day.  It  is  the 
likeness  of  a  woman  who  lives  solely  on 
emotion  and  imagination.  The  face  seems 
as  if  it  had  been  washed  into  a  certain 
weakness  by  floods  of  sorrow,  and  as  if  its 
mistress  yet  hoped  on  through  the  tears  and 
despairs  of  life,  still  pinning  shreds  of  faith 
and  trust  to  the  mast  of  her  destiny. 

This  Murillo  vision  is  dispelled  when  you 
see  Madame  Adam  of  an  afternoon,  be- 
tween four  and  six,  in  her  editorial  room, 
1 8  Boulevard  Montmartre.*  The  bureau  of 
the  Nouvelle  Revue  reminds  me  more  of  a 
typical  New  York  business  office  than  any 
I  have  ever  seen  in  Paris.  It  has  a  thor- 
oughly business-like  air,  while  most  French 
bureaux  have  something  of  the  atmosphere 
of  social  leisure.  Its  yellow  oak  furniture 
is  upholstered  in  green ;  green  cases  of  files 
mount  to  the  ceiling  in  an  orderly  way; 
folding  doors  of  green  cloth  suggest  di- 
plomacy and  dispatch. 

In     the    private    sanctum    of    Madame 

*Recently,  since  this  was  written,  the  Revue  has 
changed  quarters. 


Madame  Adam  13 

Adam,  the  walls  are  thinly  and  leanly 
decked  with  lithograph-portraits  of  Bour- 
get,  Loti,  Heredia,  with  a  sketch  of  Victor 
Hugo's  Quasimodo,  and  of  a  scene  from 
Moliere's  "L'Amour  Medecin,"  and  with 
colorless  and  unimpassioned  maps  of  the 
Sahara  and  of  the  Bissago  islands.  An  iron 
safe  weighs  the  precinct  down  with  a  solid 
and  refrigerant  substantiality. 

If  it  happens  to  be  summer  time,  the 
window  is  unlatched  for  fresh  air.  Madame 
Adam,  unlike  the  rest  of  her  race,  believes 
in  heaven's  fresh  air.  Green  trees  screen 
her  from  the  boulevard,  whose  cushioned 
noise  rides  freely  in  through  the  open  case- 
ment. 

Madame  Adam  is  a  tall,  large,  finely  pro- 
portioned woman.  She  is  a  picture  of 
health.  A  kind  of  ruddy  hue  is  on  her  face. 
Her  hair  is  barely  beginning  to  turn  gray. 
Her  gray  eyes  level  a  cool,  steady  aim  at 
you.  She  wears,  in  her  office,  a  gray  habit 
with  no  furbelows  and  no  ornaments  save  a 
simple  medallion  at  her  throat.  Her  manly 
shoulders  are  valiantly  set  off  with  epaulets. 
A  black  cord  chaperons  her  eyeglasses. 


14  Madame  Adam 

She  usually  twirls  or  clinches  them  closed 
in  her  hand  when  she  talks.  Her  voice  is 
pitched  in  a  strong,  business  key,  and 
sounds  as  if  it  were  straining  somewhat  to 
give  proper  vent  to  her  masculine  thoughts 
and  feelings. 

Since  she  loves  to  be  in  the  thick  of  the 
fray,  she  is  outspoken  to  the  outermost 
limit.  Her  dominant  personality  probably 
explains  why  her  clerks  appear  effaced  to 
the  pale  and  quaking  condition  of  aspen 
leaves,  for  she  does  not  hesitate  to  fire  off 
such  verbal  projectiles  as  "imbeciles"  and 
"rustres"  in  the  directions  where  iron  ton- 
ics seem  to  her  to  be  needed. 

She  converses  with  admirable  readiness. 
Her  sentences  are  so  prompt  and  to  the 
point  that  you  sometimes  might  fancy  she 
had  committed  them  to  memory.  There 
are  no  vague  or  supplemental  phrases  and  no 
fumbling  of  words.  Language,  for  her,  is 
an  adequate  and  convenient  instrument. 
Frequently  she  grows  eloquent  in  her  con- 
versation, especially  when  her  theme  is  her 
love  for  France.  She  becomes  an  orator 
then,  and  has  the  habit  of  bringing  her  fist 


Madame  Adam  15 

down  on  her  desk,  to  the  saltatory  alarm  of 
the  various  objects  in  the  vicinity. 

The  religion  of  Madame  Adam  is  patri- 
otism. She  is,  you  know,  a  writer  on  poli- 
tics. She  was  enthusiastically  initiated 
into  their  labyrinthine  hopelessness  by  her 
adored  friend  Gambetta.  Her  tremendous 
patriotism  is  a  source  of  regret  to  those 
who  trust  that  the  advent  of  full-righted 
Woman  will  favor  peace  and  good-will 
among  the  modern  Sabines  and  Romans. 
Madame  Adam's  idea  is  that  we  belong  to 
an  era  of  international  hostility  and  strife, 
therefore  one's  duty  is  to  fight  chivalrously 
for  his  country,  by  pen  and  by  voice,  day 
and  night,  to  the  last  breath.  So,  in  her 
eyes,  France  is  entitled  to  all  she  can  get. 

However,  Madame  Adam  does  not  behold 
the  workings  of  contemporary  French  poli- 
tics with  chauvinistic  complacency.  Far 
from  that.  She  insists  it  is  not  true  that 
a  Frenchman  can  not  succeed  in  a  po- 
litical career  unless  he  hangs  on  to  the  gown 
of  some  woman.  And  this  is,  to  her  mind, 
precisely  the  reason  why  the  internal  poli- 
tics of  France  are  so  bad. 


1 6  Madame  Adam 

"No,"  she  will  say,  "ce  n'esf  pas  vrai, 
Mas!  for  it  would  be  better  if  our  pre- 
tended statesmen  stayed  at  home  and  list- 
ened to  their  wives.  Instead  of  this,  they 
go  to  the  buffet,  to  the  cafe,  to  the  club, 
even.  They  are  a  lot  of  rustres  who  are 
looking  out  for  their  pockets  and  not  those 
of  the  people.  I  am  for  democracy,  on  the 
plan  that  all  classes  should  be  best.  We 
should  work  to  that  end.  We  have  changed 
the  Greek  scheme.  The  Greeks  went  on 
the  idea  that  there  should  be  an  aristocracy 
which  should  be  the  cream  of  a  nation." 

Ancient  Greece  is  one  of  the  splendid 
hobbies  of  Madame  Adam.  She  has  long  been 
a  student  of  the  old  Hellenes,  and  confided 
to  me  recently  the  subject  of  the  new 
studies  which  she  is  pursuing  in  that  an- 
tique soil.  She  is  delving  among  the  mystic 
foundations  of  the  Greek  civilization. 

"I  hold,"  she  told  me  one  day,  "that 
the  world  has  always  stopped  at  the  plastic 
— the  materialistic — glories  of  Hellas.  For 
instance,  the  Athenians  turned  religion  into 
a  cult,  and  when  it  becomes  a  cult  it  be- 
comes materialistic.  People  have  all  along 


Madame  Adam  17 

caressed  the  plastic  beauties  of  Greek 
thought  and  culture,  and  halted  at  the  mys- 
ticism of  Plato.  Now,  it  is  just  there  that  I 
begin.  I  am  a  mystic;  we  must  reform 
and  regenerate  by  mysticism — it  is  the  only 
way.  Christ  reformed  his  materialistic  age 
by  his  mysticism — by  his  symbolism.  It  is 
the  occult  symbolism  of  the  Greeks  that  I 
think  should  be  dug  up  —  brought  forth  — 
to  the  light  of  our  day."  Herein  again,  in 
her  symbolistic  faith,  as  in  her  patriotic 
politics,  Madame  Adam  belongs  to  our 
epoch. 

She  does  not  believe  in  the  decadence 
of  Frenchwomen.  There  are  still  great 
Frenchwomen,  not  perhaps  just  to-day,  but 
there  were  a  decade  ago,  and  there  will  be 
in  a  few  years  again.  She  used  to  be 
taught,  as  a  child,  that  she  was  the  daugh- 
ter of  all  who  had  gone  before,  and  would 
be  the  mother  of  all  who  came  after.  Her 
confidence  in  her  sex  has  been  strengthened 
by  the  events  and  progress  in  its  affairs 
during  the  present  half  century. 

It  was  thirty-five  years  ago  that  she  at- 
tracted notice  by  her  pamphlet  combating 


1 8  Madame  Adam 

Proudhon's  dictum  that  women  were  only 
fit  to  be  housekeepers  or  courtesans.  She 
established  the  Nouvelle  Revue  to  show  this 
was  not  true.  She  had  no  need  for  a  mag- 
azine. She  wished  simply  to  demonstrate 
that  a  woman  could  run  one  in  every  par- 
ticular. And  she  takes  a  merited  satisfac- 
tion in  putting  across  its  cover:  "Madame 
Adam,  Directeur" — not  Directrice. 

She  has  discovered,  and  led  before  the 
public,  many  persons  of  talent.  The  most 
famous  of  them  is  Pierre  Loti. 

In  a  word,  if  we  had  to  designate  the 
greatest  Frenchwoman  of  our  day — the  one 
who  most  conspicuously  maintains  the  tra- 
ditions of  the  great  Frenchwomen  who 
have  played,  from  generation  to  generation, 
a  noteworthy  role  in  the  political,  literary, 
or  social  life  in  France  —  our  choice  would 
easily  fall  on  Madame  Juliette  Adam. 


M.  Sardou 


M.    Sardou 

O,  an  actor! 

An  haranguer  of  the  Revolution! 

Toujours  raudace! 

At  his  desk,  he  flings  his  arms  at  you, 
throws  himself  back  in  his  chair,  strikes 
unconscious  attitudes,  jumps  up  and  strides 
excitedly  back  and  forth  across  the  room, 
lays  down  his  arguments,  one  after  the 
other,  and  under  your  nose,  reaches  down 
and  rubs  his  ankles! 

M.  Sardou  in  his  study,  with  his  black 
velvet  skull-cap,  his  flowing  clothes,  and 
two  old  Revolutionary  kettle  drums  under 
the  table!  An  agitator,  a  reactionist  of  a 
violent  type!  In  his  excitement,  he  takes 
off  his  cap,  reveals  the  fact  that  he  has 
long,  silky,  iron-gray  hair,  through  which 
he  runs  his  fingers  and  leaves  it  flying  in 
the  air,  rams  his  hands  in  his  pockets — 

21 


22  M.  Sardou 

"Je  vais  les  embeter — vous  allez  voir/" 

He  defies  the  Third  Republic.  He  defies 
the  Theatre  Fran?ais.  The  government  is 
rotten,  and  the  Theatre  Francais  is  the  re- 
finement of  decay.  They  must  both  offer 
him  a  full  and  humble  retraction  and  apol- 
ogy on  a  silver  platter  for  that  Thermidor 
episode. 

"All  that  is  lacking  is  a  leader.  O,  if 
Boulanger  had  been  a  little  —  just  a  little — 
more  serious,  he  could  have  ridden  from 
the  Cafe  Durand  to  the  Elysee,  and  every- 
body would  have  cried  —  Vive  la  France! 
I  am  for  the  bourgeois.  Let  them  rule. 
Louis  Philippe  —  he  was  all  right.  The 
aristocracy  reigned  under  the  ancien 
r/gime,  the  people  reigned  in  the  Revolu- 
tion —  now  it's  the  turn  of  the  middle  class. 
They  are  the  backbone — the  reserved  force 
of  the  nation.  They  always  pull  France 
out  of  her  disasters." 

And  the  Theatre  Frangais  !  What  an 
asylum  of  respectable  imbeciles!  Its  actors 
can't  act;  its  managers  know  nothing  about 
the  stage.  M.  Sardou  has  always  found 
his  great  interpreters  in  the  theatres  of  the 


M.  Sardou  23 

boulevards.  It  was  Dejazet  who  created 
his  early  roles  and  gave  him  his  first  "send 
off." 

"I  shall  never  forget  how  I  set  off  that 
June  morning  across  the  fields,  with  my 
first  manuscript  under  my  arm.  I  went  to 
submit  it  to  Dejazet.  She  was  sixty  and  I 
twenty-six!  O  je  le  crois  bien  —  Dejazet!" 

M.  Sardou  is  perfectly  able  and  willing  to 
take  care  of  himself.  He  says  to  all  emula- 
tors and  antagonists:  "The  field  is  free 
and  open  to  the  world.  The  fight  will  be 
fair  and  square.  I  warn  you  I  'm  a  good 
fighter,  so  that  if  you  fail  or  get  hurt,  you 
must  not  blame  me."  And  you  may  be 
sure  that,  in  the  scuffle,  M.  Sardou  will  get 
the  oyster  and  leave  you  the  shell. 

While  he  is  so  openly  defiant,  decided, 
lucid,  a  true  friend  to  his  friends  and  ever 
energetically  at  work  in  their  behalf,  he  is, 
at  the  same  time,  smooth  and  subtile  like  an 
Italian.  And  he  is  an  Italian.  His  ances- 
tors were  Italians  in  Sardinia. 

This  accounts  for  his  love  of  Italy.  He 
always  spends  his  vacations  there,  or  near 
the  confines  of  Lombardy.  Ah,  yes!  He 


24  M.  Sardou 

is  very  deft,  adept,  Machiavelian — urbane, 
exuberant,  unctuous. 

He  is  delightful  in  his  family  life,  and 
very  hospitable.  And  he  is  the  only  play- 
wright known  to  the  Parisian  populace  and 
popular  with  them. 

One's  mornings  with  Sardou!  What 
rousing,  salient,  Sans-Gene  scenes  of  con- 
versation, comedy,  drama,  rebellion! 

De"jazet — 6  je  le  crois  bien! 

Audacity  forever,  young  man !  Audacity 
forever! 


M.   Zola 


M.  Zola 

Always  at  home  to  you  after  six  o'clock. 

A  business  man.  No  emotion,  no  ideals, 
no  imagination,  no  poetry,  in  his  personal 
intercourse.  He  does  not  try  to  win  or  en- 
tertain you.  He  takes  no  personal  interest 
in  you,  and  does  not  expect  you  to  take  any 
personal  interest  in  him. 

He  talks  frankly  and  freely  about  every- 
thing, but  in  a  secular  way.  He  makes  life 
seem  to  you  merely  a  commercial  career. 
Fiction  for  him  is  editions  of  100,000  and 
50,000  francs  a  year.  His  magisterial  and 
magnificent  panoramas  of  descriptions,  un- 
equalled for  their  kind,  are  all  measured 
off  in  his  mind  as  so  many  rods  of  printed 
matter  at  so  much  a  rod.  No  one  can  de- 
scribe a  forest  as  he  can,  with  its  colors, 
nooks,  grandeur,  repose;  but  to  him,  indi- 
vidually, it  simply  means  so  many  thou- 
sand feet  of  sawed  lumber  with  which  to 
27 


28  M.  Zola 

build  emigrant  vessels  and  dredging  ma- 
chines. 

No  personal  magnetism,  no  sentiment, 
no  perfume,  no  rose  colors. 

You  always  see  him  at  a  vernissage.  He 
will  be  dressed  like  a  well-to-do  merchant, 
with  his  hat  tipped  back  on  his  head,  his 
fingers  clutching  each  other  behind  his 
back,  his  lips  moving  in  some  prosaic  con- 
versation, his  eyes  seeing  nothing  across 
the  crowd. 

At  home,  after  six,  he  is  apt  to  wear  a 
snug,  snuff-colored,  sack  suit,  with  plenty 
of  pockets  for  his  hands  —  a  close-fitting 
working  gear.  His  physique  is  robust, 
with  a  big  tendency  to  obesity.  His  voice 
is  weak,  and  cracked,  and  pitched  high.  His 
realism  finds  expression  in  his  broad  nose. 
It  is  a  nose  constructed  to  root  up  the 
ground  and  sniff  out  the  filth  of  existence. 

He  has  a  tired,  overworked  air.  His 
eyes  look  weary,  and  he  says  "Ah!"  with 
a  sigh,  when  he  speaks  of  the  immense  field 
he  has  rooted  over  and  has  yet  to  root  over 
in  his  brutal  manner.  Life  has  been  for 
him  a  blunt,  rude,  brutish  thing.  He  has 


M.  Zola  29 

conquered  merely  because  he  has  worked 
harder  than  any  one  else.  With  him,  natur- 
alistic literature  succeeds  only  by  the  sweat 
of  the  brow. 

And  you  fancy  that  this  colossus  of  a 
novelist  works  fifteen  or  eighteen  hours  a 
day?  He  pretends  to  write  only  three. 
He  begins  at  ten  and  stops  at  one  or  two 
in  the  afternoon.  And  his  first  hour 
amounts  to  little;  it  is  only  his  last  two 
hours  that  count. 

What  loins  of  strength,  nevertheless! 
What  Titanic  capacities  to  achieve!  He 
towers  over  all  his  Parisian  contemporaries, 
as  Victor  Hugo  towered  over  his  epoch. 
Hugo  and  Zola  are  the  two  great  French 
literary  names  of  the  century,  for  roman- 
ticism and  naturalism  are  its  two  great  lit- 
erary movements.  Still  M.  Zola  is  not 
strictly  naturalistic,  as  was  Maupassant. 
He  presents  other  enormous  attitudes  and 
aspects.  Even  his  severest  critics  confess 
their  astonishment  at  his  colossal  enter- 
prises—  his  novels  with  forty  characters, 
and  with  immeasurable  perspectives  of 
country,  history,  human  life. 


30  M.  Zola 

Hugo,  and  Zola,  his  child  on  the  natur- 
alistic side!  Four  letters  each  and  two 
vowels.  Both  giants  endowed  with  Hercu- 
lean capacities;  both  excellent  business 
men;  both  hounded  almost  to  death,  and 
still  triumphant;  both  made  wealthy  by 
their  pens. 


M.  Daudet 


M.   Daudet 

No  more  delicious  hour  can  be  spent  in 
France  than  that  to  which  M.  Alphonse 
Daudet,  with  his  "causerie  charmeuse^ 
treats  his  friends  of  a  Sunday  morning. 

All  the  world  knows  of  him  as  a  novelist; 
the  Parisians  are  familiar  with  him  as  a 
playwright;  his  bubbling  gayety,  gossamer 
fancy,  perfume-pointed  irony,  and  inde- 
pendent, individualistic  attitude  in  the 
realm  of  letters,  make  him  savored  and  re- 
spected by  every  one.  Yet  how  few  have 
heard  of  his  delightful  talks,  of  his  piquant 
and  imponderable  conversation,  gentle  and 
fragile  as  a  woman's  —  expansive  and  con- 
fiding as  Tartarin's!  There  are  in  it  the 
sparkle  and  laugh  of  Provence,  the  beading 
flavor  of  southern  grape,  the  dulcet  song 
and  dance  of  some  cascade  in  Languedoc. 

I  have  just  come  from  one  of  his 
"causeries"  and  am  able  to  give  you  the 
33 


34  M.  Daudet 

kernel  of  it,  but  not,  alas,  its  taste  and  fra- 
grance. He  was  saying:  "No,  I  belong  to 
no  school.  I  am  for  the  truth — that 's  my 
motto  in  literature.  I  try  to  picture  reali- 
ties. Am  I  naturalistic,  realistic,  impres- 
sionistic? I  cannot  say,  for  I  pay  no  heed 
to  these  classifications.  I  was  for  fifteen 
years  the  dramatic  critic  of  the  Moniteur 
Officiel,  and  never  in  a  single  instance  used 
any  of  those  terms.  I  think  that  such  cat- 
egories and  labels  are  for  the  most  part 
useless. 

"Of  course,  the  impressionistic  idea  is 
right  in  one  phase.  Truth — actuality — con- 
stantly shift  their  guises — they  present  a 
different  aspect  to  us  every  day,  every 
year,  every  generation.  Why?  Because  we 
are  human  beings.  If  we  could  know  the 
complete  verity  and  could  speak  of  it  with 
absolute  exactness,  we  should  no  longer  be 
men  —  we  should  be  Dieu.  In  my  new 
book,  "La  Petite  Paroisse,"  I  cling  to  real- 
ity as  firmly  as  I  possibly  can  in  my  de- 
scriptions of  places  and  things. 

"No,  to  my  mind,  this  classification  of 
literature  is  largely  nonsense.  It 's  like 


M.  Daudet  35 

saying  this:  Now  the  apple  is  round — let  it 
stand  for  round-headed  people — those  who 
have  little  fancy,  yet  possess  le  bon  sens 
— the  practical  sense  —  the  gift  for  matters 
of  fact.  And  let  the  pear,  which  is  long, 
stand  for  the  people  whose  heads  are  nar- 
row and  long.  The  pear,  therefore,  repre- 
sents imagination,  the  romantic.  Then 
you  simply  divide  all  writers  into  apples 
and  pears.  Mr.  X.  is  an  apple;  Mr.  Y.  is 
a  pear.  The  former  has  the  sensibilities  of 
an  apple;  the  latter  is  endowed  with  the 
imagination  of  a  pear.  Mr.  Z.,  the  poet, 
picks  up  a  magazine  in  which  there  is  an 
exhaustive  review  of  his  works.  He  finds 
the  critic  proving  that  he  (Mr.  Z.)  is  not 
Mr.  Z.  but  a  pomological  specimen  —  that 
he  has  and  can  have  no  attributes  except, 
for  instance,  those  belonging  to  an  apple. 
How  does  Mr.  Z.  feel  about  this  discovery? 
Why  —  of  course,  he  can  only  feel  like  an 
apple.  I,  for  example  —  am  I  an  apple  or 
a  pear?  I  fancy  I  am  neither  one  nor  the 
other  —  merely  a  sort  of  nectarine.  Very 
picturesque,  such  literary  cataloguing,  is  n't 
it?  —  yet  what  does  it  amount  to?" 


36  M.  Daudet 

"And  the  prunes,"  I  suggested,  as  I 
smiled  at  the  thought  of  that  famous  poem, 
and  of  the  rice  and  prune  parties  which 
Tartarin  encountered  in  the  hotel  on  the 
Rigi. 

"And  the  prunes — "repeated  M.  Dau- 
det, with  a  hint  of  amused  revery,  and  with 
that  genial  toss  of  the  head  which  is  fa- 
miliar to  him 

"Yes,  I  wished  to  see  England.  What  I 
dreaded  most  there  was  the  lack  of  sun- 
shine. I  love  the  sun  —  I  have  aways 
missed  it  in  Paris.  We  of  the  Midi  must 
have  plenty  of  sunshine — it  somehow  means 
to  us  health,  good  spirits  —  that  things  will 
move  on  better 

"I  am  ever  dreaming  even  of  the  lands 
that  are  buried  in  the  Arctics  —  I  picture 
them  to  myself  at  night  when  I  lie  awake 
hour  after  hour, and  cannot  sleep.  I  follow 
in  my  imagination  every  polar  expedition 
that  starts  on  its  journey — I  see  in  my 
mind's  eye,  day  by  day,  the  brave,  suffering 
explorers  as  they  toil  wearily  over  the  ice 
and  snow. 

"Yes,    I   am   always   reading    books    of 


M.  Daudet  37 

travel — always.  No  country  is  too  distant 
to  pique  my  constant  curiosity.  It  is  not 
difficult  to  understand,  then,  that  England, 
with  its  mists  and  green  lawns,  has  ever 
held  a  large  place  in  the  realm  of  my  fantasy. 

"I  have  never  been  a  great  traveler  in 
reality,  but  I  am  an  indefatigable  one  in  my 
fancies.  You  know  I  went  to  Algeria  be- 
fore I  put  together  Tartarin  —  I  had  seen 
Africa  before  writing  the  book  —  I  went 
with  a  friend —  " 

"And  Tartarin?"  I  queried. 

"And  /  was  Tartarin. "       .... 

"No,  I  may  almost  say  that  I  went  to 
London  without  any  preconceived  notions 
about  the  English.  Of  course,  I  would  not 
be  frank  with  myself  if  I  did  not  confess 
that  I  had  never  liked  an  Englishman. 
Still,  I  had  not  known  one  English  person 
well  —  and  had  met  very  few  English  peo- 
ple; in  fact,  I  think  I  had  only  met  them  in 
traveling. 

"I  must  admit  that  my  experiences  with 
them  en  voyage  had  never  been  happy  —  per- 
haps it  was  partly  my  fault.  When  I  was 
on  my  wedding  tour  an  Englishman  was 


j  8  M.  Daudet 

with  us  in  the  compartment  in  the  train.  I 
wanted  the  window  lowered  —  he  insisted 
that  it  be  kept  closed — I  explained  that 
my  wife  needed  fresh  air  —  the  window  re- 
mained shut.  Finally,  in  a  fit  of  impa- 
tience, I  thrust  my  elbow  through  the  pane, 
and  exclaimed:  'There,  sir,  keep  the  air 
from  entering  now,  if  you  can!  ' 

"Of  course, my  southern  nature  is  expan- 
sive, confiding —  the  British  disposition  is 
not  naturally  of  that  type.  It  has  been  my 
idea  that  the  fond — the  foundation  —  of 
an  Englishman's  temperament  or  character, 
is  ennui — and  that  is  why  he  is  so  hospi- 
table in  his  home,  and  so  ready  to  welcome 
strangers  to  his  fireside. 

"But  my  dislike  for  the  English  has 
changed  during  the  past  three  years.  My 
books  have  been  selling  well  in  England  — 
the  London  people  have  said  the  friendliest 
and  pleasantest  things  of  me.  All  that  has 
had  its  effect;  and  this,  added  to  my  ad- 
miration—  which  has  always  been  great  — 
for  the  world-wide  power  and  civilizing  in- 
fluence of  that  dauntless  isle,  made  me 
very  curious  to  visit  it.  ... 


M.  Daudet  39 

"I  am  not  doing  anything  for  the  thea- 
tre now.  I  am  not  as  much  at  ease  in 
drama  or  comedy  as  in  fiction.  To  suc- 
ceed with  a  play,  you  must  be  a  debater,  a 
kind  of  protagonist  —  you  must  have  un- 
abashed confidence  in  your  opinions  about 
the  stage,  so  that  you  can  say  to  the  man- 
ager and  actors:  'You  must  do  that  —  the 
public  wants  this!' 

"That  is  not  my  nature.  I  listen  to 
those  around  me,  and  think  that  other  peo- 
ple must  be  right,  and  do  as  every  one  else 
suggests.  The  trouble  with  the  theatre 
manager  is  that  he  is  under  great  stress. 
His  expenses  are  heavy,  and  he  is  always 
striving  to  faire  le  maximum.  As  I  know 
nothing  of  the  'maximum,'  I  promptly  yield 
to  his  judgment.  Still,  I  have  had  some 
very  good  ideas  about  the  theatre.  Porel 
was  exclaiming  only  the  other  day  in  refer- 
ence to  a  certain  play,  'O,  if  I  had  followed 
your  advice!' 

"I  have  done  a  great  deal  of  critical 
work  across  the  footlights.  I  was  the  first 
in  Paris  to  insist  on  a  more  elaborate  and 
scientific  mise  en  scene.  Sarcey  came  after 


4o  M.  Daudet 

me  in  this.  I  was  the  first,  too,  to  write 
a  history  of  dramatic  criticism  in  France. 
I  traced  the  links  of  its  evolution  down  to 
Napoleon  I.  Napoleon  was,  in  point  of 
time,  our  first  dramatic  critic.  He  studied 
plays  and  the  audiences  in  something  of  a 
systematic  way,  and  began  to  introduce 
method  where  all  had  been  caprice  and 
chaos.  He  integrated  the  theatre  —  he 
commenced  to  convert  it  into  an  organized 
factor  in  public  and  popular  education  and 
life." 

"Do  you  think,"  I  queried,  "that  the 
cafe  chantant  is  really  making  inroads  into 
the  domain  of  the  theatre?  Is  the  cafe 
chantant  of  Parisian  origin,  or  does  it  come 
from  southern  France?" 

"O,  the  cafe  chantant  is  a  French  insti- 
tution—  it  comes  from  all  parts  of  France. 
Take  our  village  inn  of  an  evening.  Some 
one  is  called  upon  to  sing  or  recite.  When 
he  is  done,  a  lounger  cries  out — l£t  vous — 
la-bas  —  give  us  something;  it 's  your  turn.' 
This  invited  one  responds,  like  his  prede- 
cessor, with  a  selection  —  so  the  evening 


M.  Daudet  41 

passes  off.  Everybody  contributes  from 
his  repertory. 

"That  is  the  beginning  of  the  cafechan- 
tant.  It  is  in  vogue  in  Paris  because  it  is 
cheap  —  you  can  smoke  there,  and  talk, 
and  you  do  not  have  to  think.  At  the 
theatre,  on  the  other  hand,  you  pay  a  big 
price  for  a  narrow,  uncomfortable  seat  — 
you  can  't  move  nor  chat,  and  you  have  to 
think  to  follow  the  play.  The  fond  of  the 
spectator  is  indolence.  He  wants  to  sit  on 
the  small  of  his  back  and  be  entertained, 
with  the  least  exertion  possible  on  his  part. 
The  Frenchman  is  active,  nervous  —  he 
does  not  like  to  listen  more  than  three  min- 
utes at  a  time.  He  wishes  to  turn  to  his 
neighbor  and  say,  *O,  I  have  heard  that 

song  rendered  better  down  in  the  Rue ; 

I  can  render  it  better  myself — he  wants 
to  chatter  and  sing.  This  kind  of  temper- 
ament is  death  to  the  theatre,  and  is  the 
life  of  the  cafe  chantant.  It  explains  why 
the  concert  hall  is  so  popular  with  us. 

"And  then  you  cannot  hear  the  actors 
distinctly  nowadays.  There  is  only  Coque- 
lin  who  has  a  voice  —  an  organe.  The  rest 


42  M.  Daudet 

are  great,  but  they  are  too  old,  or  have  lost 
their  teeth,  or  speak  with  their  backs  to- 
ward you.  As  for  me  —  I  say  it  frankly  — 
le  theatre  massomme — the  theatre  is  a  ter- 
rible bore  to  me. 

"Music, —  O,  that's  another  matter!  I 
adore  music  —  orchestra,  voice,  piano, 
street  organ,  Jew's  harp  —  I  patronize  them 
all  —  yes,  and  Wagner,  too.  I  was  a  Wag- 
nerian  long  before  he  became  the  fashion 
in  France.  No,  I  never  met  Wagner,  but 
I  will  tell  you  this.  One  day  an  acquaint- 
ance of  mine  was  in  Wagner's  cabinet  de 
travail  at  Baireuth.  Among  the  portraits 
hanging  there,  he  was  surprised  to  discover 
mine.  'What!'  he  exclaimed,  'why  here  's 
a  Frenchman!'  'Yes,'  responded  Wagner, 
'I  am  fond  of  Daudet  —  he  is  the  only 
Frenchman  I  would  have  in  my  house.' 

"Do  you  know  Henry  James?  He  is  al- 
ways kind  enough  to  come  and  see  me  when 
he  is  in  Paris.  I  find  him  charming.  I 
do  not  read  English  —  unless  it 's  about  me 
—  but  he  is  said  by  my  friends  to  hold  the 
highest  rank  as  a  novelist  in  England  and 
America." 


M.  Daudet  43 

"Yes,"  I  replied,  "I  am  told  the  only 
criticism  usually  offered  on  him  is  that  his 
style  is  prolix  —  parentheses,  dashes,  semi- 
colons, all  chained  together  in  one  sentence. 

"O,  if  that  is  so,  I  think  this  is  the  ex- 
planation: he  is  a  great  lover  of  Flaubert 

—  is  a  competent  authority  on  him  —  and 
has  fallen  heir  to  his  style.     We  have,   in 
general,   two    kinds    of    literary    style    in 
France;    that    of   Voltaire  —  brief,    limpid 
sentences;  and  that  of  Chateaubriand  and 
Flaubert  —  long,  flowing  periods  that  never 
end.     Flaubert  used  to  recite  whole  pages 
of    Chateaubriand  —  he    was    passionately 
fond  of  passing  through  his  'gueuloir'  those 
immense,   unrolling    panorama-paragraphs. 

"There  is  Flaubert  right  behind  you — an 
eau  forte — that  is  just  as  he  looked.  And 
Turgeneff?  Yes,  he  was  one  of  our  four 

—  I    was    deeply    attached    to    him,  mais 
feprouvai  un  deboire.     You  remember  what 

I  have  written  about  it.  Turgeneff  accepted 
my  hospitality  here,  and  I  supposed  he  was 
one  of  my  truest  friends,  and  still,  as  you 
know,  he  was  writing  in  his  souvenirs  that  I 
was  utterly  devoid  of  character  and  talent. 


44  M.  Daudet 

Many  Russians  have  come  to  see  me,  and 
have  said  that  it  could  not  be  so,  that  such 
dissimulation  is  not  possible  to  the  Russian 
nature,  and  so  on.  I  don't  know  —  enfin, 
c'ttait  comme  fa  —  no  one  has  ever  been 
able  to  explain  away  what  Turgeneff  left 
in  his  memoirs. 

"But  the  'Jeunes'  have  all  that  is  new 
and  curious  to-day.  The  young  men  natur- 
ally hold  the  coming  generation  in  their 
hands.  It  is  a  strange  and  significant  fact 
that  they  look  upon  Baudelaire  as  a  kind  of 
godfather.  I  knew  Baudelaire  well.  He 
lived  at  46  Rue  Amsterdam,  and  I  at  44.  I 
used  to  be  with  him  every  day  —  we  ate  to- 
gether frequently  —  he  called  me  lmon 
J>etit.'  He  was  thirty-seven,  and  I  was 
eighteen.  After  a  while  we  rather  avoided 
each  other,  or,  at  any  rate,  I  tried  to  avoid 
him.  What  displeased  me  most  about 
Baudelaire  was  his  posing.  For  instance  — 
we  were  walking  one  morning  past  a  great 
block  of  dismantled  buildings  —  an  ugly 
mass  of  ruins.  Baudelaire  stopped,  beheld 
it  fatalistically,  and  exclaimed  in  a  dramatic 
way:  'Cest  la  destruction!' 


M.  Daudet  45 

"Is  it  possible  that,  as  you  say,  foreign- 
ers in  Paris  complain  of  the  vie  ferntee  of 
Parisian  households?  Why,  the  idea  had 
never  occurred  to  me.  I  do  not  understand 
it.  You  see  how  it  all  is  about  you  here 
(throwing  his  arm  in  a  careless  gesture)  — 
how  unpretending  it  is  —  old  things.  We 
live  in  modest  comfort  —  friends,  ac- 
quaintances, strangers  —  all  are  welcome — 
every  one  does  as  he  pleases.  Of  course, 
at  the  same  time,  we  lead  a  close  family 
life.  I  was  laughing  just  before  you  came 
in,  for  I  heard  my  boy  of  sixteen  ask  his 
mother,  'Won't  you  go  walking  with  me 
this  afternoon?'  'I  cannot  —  I  must  take 
your  little  sister  out  —  why  do  n't  you  go 
alone?'  'O,  I  do  n't  want  to  go  without  you. ' 

"My  eldest  son  lives  in  another  part  of 
town,  but  he  comes  here  every  day  in  the 
year  to  embrace  me,  and  to  inquire,  'How 
are  you  to-day,  father?'  ' Moi,  je  suis  pour 
la  famille' — I  believe  with  my  heart  and  soul 
in  the  sanctity  of  marriage  and  the  fireside. 
I  am  not  in  favor  of  the  institution  of  di- 
vorce. Love  of  family  and  love  of  country 
—  those  are  my  two  great  mottoes.  It 


46  M.  Daudet 

seems  to  me  ideal  to  choose  one  person  and 
to  say  to  yourself — 'That  is  the  person 
whose  eyes  I  am  to  close  forever,  or  who  is 
to  seal  mine  in  the  last  sleep. ' 

"When  you  visit  us  at  Champrosay  this 
summer,  I  will  show  you  that  our  family 
life  is  by  no  means  fermee  —  walled  up. 
With  us,  every  one  makes  himself  at  home. 
We  get  together  at  breakfast  time  —  we 
stroll  into  the  park — we  shout  to  each  other 
—  we  wear  our  old  clothes  —  we  give  a  ren- 
dezvous for  five  o'clock  tea  —  we  talk, 
laugh,  sing.  My  son  has  a  tennis  court 
there.  I  go  and  sit  on  a  bench,  and  watch 
the  game.  A  photographer  in  the  Avenue 
Victor  Hugo  has  photographed  the  scene. 
There  I  am  with  my  cane,  and  with  a  big 
hat  drawn  down  over  my  ears.  I  look  like 
a  patriarch  —  they  call  me  the  'old  man.'  " 

Callers  are  announced.  I  reluctantly 
take  leave  of  the  cher  maitre.  I  pass  out 
of  the  ebony-colored  apartment  in  the  Rue 
Bellechasse.  The  furniture  is  antique  — 
the  furnishings  are  dark  —  a  jardiniere  of 
red  cyclamens  saucily  perk  up  their  heads 
on  a  table — two  or  three  of  J.  L.  Brown's 


M.  Daudet  47 

pictures  enliven  the  walls.  And  I  come 
away  filled  with  the  charm  of  a  delectable 
hour  —  a  charm  that  somehow  suggests  the 
moral  refinement  of  Sully  Prudhomme, 
the  grace  of  Raphael  Collin,  the  delicacy 

of  Puech. 

*         *         * 

M.  Daudet  is  so  delightful  that  I  cannot 
resist  the  temptation  of  ringing  his  floor 
whenever  I  am  in  his  street.  If  he  likes 
you,  the  valet  will  always  open  the  door 
for  you  to  the  study  without  hesitation  or 
ceremony. 

One  morning  last  month  as  I  burst  in  on 
him  in  this  fashion,  he  was  fumbling  over 
some  books  and  papers  on  his  desk  and  was 
ready,  as  usual,  to  talk  of  everything.  He 
picked  up  a  little  volume  at  his  right  hand, 
and  said:  "Do  you  see  that?  I'll  tell 
you  what  it  is.  It  was  sent  me  by  the 
author  —  who  he  is  I  have  n't  the  slightest 
idea.  But  see  —  the  text  is  only  printed  in 
the  middle  of  each  page,  so  that  there's  a 
large  white  space  above,  below,  and  on  each 
side  of  the  type.  I  use  it  for  writing  mem- 
oranda. Look,  how  I  've  written  data  all 


48  M.  Daudet 

over  its  leaves  —  very  convenient  —  I  use  it 
every  day  for  my  notes.  I  call  that  book  a 
practical  example  of  the  aesthetic  spirit." 

"But  the  poor  author?"  I  hinted. 

"O,  as  for  the  author,  why  I  have  written 
him  thanking  him  for  thinking  of  me,  and 
told  him  that  his  book  is  always  on  my  desk 
—  it  never  quits  my  sight." 

To  be  besieged  by  all  kinds  of  people, 
and  requests,  and  missives  is  one  of  the  dis- 
agreeable features  of  being  a  celebrity, 
especially  if  you  are  known  to  have  a  warm 
heart  like  that  of  M.  Daudet.  Here  are  two 
samples  of  the  letters  which  he  receives 
almost  daily.  He  was  reading  them  to  me 
that  morning.  The  first  was  composed  in 
poor  French  by  an  American  woman.  It 
ran  as  follows: 

"CHICAGO,  April  5,  1896. 
Dear  Sir: — I  have  your  new  book,  "The 
Little  Parish. "  It  is  very  good.  Indeed, 
it  is  all  the  talk  around  here.  Now,  I 
should  like  to  give  you  an  idea.  Why  not 
write  a  novel  about  the  New  Woman?  I 
think  that  would  be  a  splendid  subject  for 
you.  Yours  truly, 

CAROLINE  W . " 


M.  Daudet  49 

Why  was  that  letter  written?  you  ask. 
Merely  to  capture  M.  Daudet's  autographic 
response.  But  in  this  instance  the  writer 
had  shot  too  wide  of  the  mark. 

The  second  letter  was  dated  "Berlin," 
and  was  written  in  good  French  and  in  a 
Spencerian  hand.  It  was  long.  This  is  a 
fragment  of  it: 

"You  old  villain!  You  are  like  all 
other  Frenchmen  —  too  mean  to  live.  You 
have  no  conscience,  no  sincerity.  You  are 
utterly  incapable  of  telling  the  truth  or 
writing  it.  You  should  be  taught  a  hand- 
some lesson  —  you,  and  your  race  as  well. 
And  you  can  rest  assured  that  the  Germans 
are  keeping  a  sharp  eye  on  you  all,  and  at 
the  first  opportunity  they  will  visit  Paris 
again ;  but  this  time  it  will  not  be  on  round 
trip  tickets.  They  will  stay  for  good.  You 
ought  to  be  hit  with  a  bullet;  and  if  some 
one  does  not  do  his  duty  by  you,  I,  myself, 
will  see  that  the  deed  is  done." 

This  is,  of  course,  some  poor,  demented 
person  who  has  as  yet  escaped  the  asylum. 
M.  Daudet  does  not  know  who  he  is  any 
more  than  you  or  I.  Still,  it  is  not  pleas- 
ant to  receive  such  a  billet-doux  over  your 
morning  cup  of  coffee.  And  to  think  that 


50  M.  Daudet 

this  should  fall  to  the  lot  of  the  genial, 
generous  author  of  "Jack"  ! 

In  illustration  of  these  qualities  in  him, 
let  your  fancy  witness  the  following  little 
scene  which  happened  one  Sunday  morning 
when  I  was  in  his  studio.  A  letter  was 
brought  in.  M.  Daudet  eyed  the  signature, 
and  skirmished  over  the  contents,  mum- 
blingly  quoting  the  phrases,  "My  misery  is 
about  to  end" —  "At  last  hope  gilds  the  fu- 
ture" —  "I  need  but  five  francs. " 

M.  Daudet  turned  to  us,  saying:  "Ah!  if 
we  could  be  sure  that  his  story  is  true!" 
He  slipped  a  five-franc  piece  in  an  envel- 
ope, sealed  it,  and  sent  it  out. 

Then  he  read  the  letter  to  us,  and  said: 
"There  is  a  whole  novel  here.  Three  or 
four  years  ago,  I  received  a  copy  of  a  peri- 
odical from  Languedoc  —  a  wild-eyed  sheet 
proclaiming  the  resurrection  of  literature, 
the  reform  of  the  French  language,  and  so 
on.  It  was  hoarse  with  'Down  with  mod- 
ern methods!'  —  'Death  to  the  contempo- 
rary litterateurs!'  After  a  time,  the  editor 
appeared  on  the  scene  in  Paris.  He  had 
come  to  carry  the  war  into  Africa.  He 


M.  Daudet  51 

did  not  have  air  enough  in  Montpellier. 
But  Paris  and  Montpellier  are  not  the  same 
thing.  He  had  made  a  great  noise  down 
in  his  province,  but  here  his  reverberations 
were  swallowed  up  in  silence  in  the  great 
roar  of  Paris. 

"So  he  almost  starved.  He  came  to  me, 
because  he  knew  I  was  from  the  south.  I 
helped  him  a  little.  He  has  kept  along, 
barely  able  to  cling  to  existence  with  his 
wife  and  child  —  no  work,  no  money,  no 
friends.  Finally,  to-day,  he  writes  triumph- 
antly—  as  you  have  heard  —  that  he  has 
secured  the  position  of  spy  on  the  police 
force.  He  is  to  'run  in'  thieves  and  track 
suspicious  characters.  'My  misery  is  about 
to  end'  —  'a  light  is  beginning  to  break.' 
His  expansive,  exploding,  southern  nature 
is  enthusiastic  over  the  glorious  prospect. 
The  lowest  post  on  the  detective  service  of 
Paris  is  for  his  grateful  soul  la  gloire — fame 
and  fortune.  Four  years  ago,  nothing 
short  of  reforming  language  and  literature 
from  beginning  to  end  would  have  satisfied 
his  lofty  ambition.  And  now  he  is  elated 
over  the  chance  of  being  a  Paris  police 


r2  M.  Daudet 

scout,  at  a  salary  of  a  hundred  francs  a 
month.  Ah,  Paris!  This  is  not  the  first 
ardent,  immortal,  magnificent  soul  you  have 
extinguished  in  your  slums.  You  are  grand 
and  beautiful,  but  how  many  mortal  careers 
you  may  have  to  answer  for  —  sometime  — 
somewhere!" 


M.    Catulle    Mendes 


M.  Catulle  Mendes 

For  nearly  forty  years  he  has  been  one 
of  the  most  conspicuous  figures  of  the  sen- 
sational belletristic  and  social  world  in  the 
French  capital.  He  was  scarcely  more  than 
a  boy  when  he  impetuously  joined  the  ranks 
of  the  young  Parnassians.  He  did  as 
much  as  any  one  to  form  them  into  a  com- 
pany, and  to-day  he  is  still  waging,  with  all 
the  fire  of  his  quondam  adolescence,  the 
battle  of  the  Parnassians  against  the  later 
schools  and  movements. 

Early  in  his  tempestuous  campaign  he 
established  the  Revue  Fantaisiste,  which 
ceased  to  exist  when  he  was  fined  and  im- 
prisoned for  having  published,  within  its 
covers,  a  poem  whose  allurements  offended 
the  notice  of  the  public  censor.  Then,  in 
1866,  he  married  Mademoiselle  Judith 
Gautier,  the  daughter  of  the  poet;  but  they 
separated  before  very  long,  and  reverbera- 
55 


56  M.  Catulle  Mendes 

tions  of  the  famous  incident  filled  the  air 
in  Paris  for  several  years. 

M.  Mendes  has  long  taken  an  especial  in- 
terest in  Wagner.  Wagner  was  a  contrib- 
utor to  the  Revue  Fantaisiste  at  the  time 
of  his  unsuccessful  debuts  in  Paris  as  a 
composer.  But  it  was  not  until  later  that 
M.  Mendes  commenced  to  champion  Wag- 
ner's musical  cause  in  France.  One  of 
the  merits  of  the  role  of  M.  Mendes  is  that 
he  faithfully  fought  the  Wagner  fight  to  its 
finish  in  Paris.  By  pen,  by  word  of  mouth, 
by  editorial  and  by  conference,  he  has  all 
along  exalted  Wagner  in  the  teeth  of  a 
hostile  public. 

This  has  been  one  feature  of  his  ardent 
cult  of  Art  and  Beauty.  "The  love  of  glori- 
ous Art  and  Literature"  is  the  almost  ex- 
cessive passion  of  his  soul.  It  is  not  his 
fault  if  the  arena  of  modern  French  letters 
has  not  been  a  satisfactory  scene  of  tourna- 
ments, duels,  galas,  banquets,  adventures, 
and  exciting  occurrences  of  every  kind. 
For,  a  trait  of  his  disposition  is  the  capacity  . 
to  furnish  "incidents. "  If  a  play  of  his  is 
refused  at  a  theatre,  the  affair  is  somehow 


M.  Catulle  Mendes  57 

converted  into  a  small  cause  celebre.  He  is 
prone  to  find,  in  personal  paragraphs, 
offenses  which  would  escape  the  attention 
of  other  people.  In  such  instances,  he 
courts  duels  by  sending  forth  Hotspur  notes 
like  this:  "Messieurs,  the  items  which  you 
have  been  gratuitous  enough  to  publish 
about  me  are  false.  If  you  did  not  mean  to 
be  personal,  you  were  badly  informed; 
otherwise,  you  are  imbeciles."  If  he  is  in- 
vited to  read  a  poem  at  a  banquet  where 
such  moral  dignitaries  as  Messieurs  Be- 
renger  and  Brunetiere  are  present,  he  is 
sure  to  create  an  "incident"  by  mischiev- 
ously emphasizing  the  refrain  —  Et  ce  cher 
Baudelaire. 

In  short,  his  life  would  furnish  more  ma- 
terials for  a  melodramatic  literary  chronic- 
ler than  that  of  any  of  his  confreres. 
And  still  he  is  an  indefatigable  —  prolific  — 
writer.  Some  fifty  volumes  and  plays  owe 
their  existence  to  his  pen.  He  has  poured 
forth  poems,  novels,  contes,  dramas,  come- 
dies, addresses,  prefaces.  A  facile  and 
elegant  artisan  of  prose,  he  is  likewise  an 
adept  chiseler  of  verse.  He  has  written  of 


58  M.  Catulle  Mendes 

boudoirs  de  verre,  of  love  confessionals,  of 
the  hygiene  of  beauty,  of  the  songs  of 
France.  His  tales  of  his  Colettes  and  his 
Luscignoles  are  prettily  decked  out  in  silks 
and  satins,  in  blue  and  rose.  His  Spanish 
serenades  are  rhymed  with  a  richly  decora- 
tive virtuosity.  But  out  of  all  his  produc- 
tions, and  as  a  result  of  his  long  career, 
what  will  remain? 

He  has  answered  the  question  as  follows: 
*'A  few  volumes  preserved,  because  of 
their  dedications,  in  the  libraries  of  the 
friends  whom  I  leave  behind;  two  or  three 
poems — or  merely  a  sonnet — in  the  anthol- 
ogies; and  also  perhaps  —  a  chimera  of 
which  I  sweetly,  gloriously,  dream  some- 
times—  my  bust  in  the 'Luxembourg  gar- 
dens full  of  roses. '  O,  by  no  means  so  high 
nor  so  large  as  that  of  my  beloved  guide 
and  master,  Banville.  My  pride  rises  to 
strange  heights  when  my  devotion  to  poet- 
ry, not  my  own  output,  is  placed  in*  ques- 
tion. My  greatest  satisfaction  comes  from 
the  fact  that,  through  all  the  misfortunes, 
the  joys,  and  the  agitations  of  life,  I  have 
fulfilled  —  unfailingly  and  with  enthusiasm 


M.  Catulle  Mendes  59 

—  my  literary  duty.  It  is  this  that  I  love 
to  be  praised  for.  My  grandest  delight  is 
to  read  a  beautiful  page  and  to  cry  out  to 
everybody  that  it  is  beautiful." 

M.  Mendes  is  of  medium  size.  His  hair 
and  beard  are  of  a  soft,  brown  hue,  and 
silky.  His  manners  are  graceful  and  rather 
showy.  Occasionally  you  see  him  at  the 
National  Library  in  the  Rue  Richelieu. 
When  there,  he  engages  the  attendants  to 
bring  him  armloads  of  books,  he  begins  to 
make  a  few  notes,  friends  come,  and,  in 
his  quick,  nervous  way,  he  hurries  off  for 
the  day,  and  forgets  to  accomplish  that  for 
which  he  came.  At  a  premiere,  he  often 
appears  with  his  hat  and  clothes  rumpled, 
his  beard  untrimmed,  as  if  he  had  been  in  a 
lost  mood  for  a  week. 

He  has  described  the  miserable  hole  in 
the  wall  where  he  was  stopping  when,  one 
winter  morning,  years  ago,  a  pale,  timid 
youth  named  Fran£ois  Coppee  was  ushered 
in,  and  their  long  acquaintanceship  began. 
There  was  one  chair,  a  lit  de  sangle,  a  grate 
without  fire,  poverty,  a  very  pinched  hope 
of  success  or  notoriety.  At  present  M. 


60  M.  Catulle  Mendes 

Mendes  is  chez  lui  at  Chatou,  that  favorite 
suburban  village,  which  lies  between  the 
winding  gray  ribbons  of  the  Seine  and 
under  the  terrace  of  Saint-Germain. 

Time:  seven  o'clock  in  the  evening. 

Place:  the  white  and  gold  Glacier  Na- 
politain  on  the  grand  boulevards,  opposite 
the  Vaudeville. 

People  are  drinking  absinthe. 

M.  Mendes,  with  his  hat  off,  and  in  his 
best  Bohemian  style.  His  audience  is  com- 
posed of  three  men,  and  a  handsome,  mys- 
tic-haired young  woman,  who  looks  beatific 
and  says  nothing.  M.  Mendes's  gestures 
of  flow  and  fervor  have  mown  a  swath 
around  him.  He  has  energetic  periods, 
and  then  soft,  suave  passages,  wherein 
drips  the  dew  and  blooms  the  rose.  His 
Parnassian  cadences  are  redolent  of  per- 
fume and  nectar. 

He  is  talking  of  England.  "I  saw  sur- 
prising things  there.  Imagine  this:  At  a 
famous  college  near  London  —  can't  recall 
the  name  —  they  were  holding  the  annual 
exercises.  I  was  present.  They  played 


M.  Catulle  Mendes  61 

a  piece  of  Plautus  in  Latin,  a  piece  of  Aris- 
tophanes in  Greek,  and  a  scene  of  — 
"Champignol  malgre  lui!"  Would  you 
have  believed  it?  And  in  England!  Aston- 
ishing! I  was  surprised,  too,  to  find  Jane 
Hading's  picture  in  all  the  students'  rooms. 
She  is  the  great  favorite  there.  Strange, 
is  n't  it? 

"I  had  the  honor  of  presiding  at  a  col- 
lege banquet.  The  chief  spokesman 
warned  me  at  the  table  that  he  was  going 
to  toast  me  in  Latin  and  that  I  must  pay 
him  back  in  coin  of  the  same  stamp.  I 
have  never  pretended  to  be  a  Latin  scholar, 
but  I  scribbled  off  some  notes  and  read 
them  in  response.  As  the  English  accent 
of  Latin  is  entirely  different  from  ours,  I 
got  out  of  the  scholastic  scrape  all  right.  I 
did  not  understand  a  word  my  friend  said, 
and  no  one  understood  me. 

"Most  Frenchmen  find  London  a  sombre 
bore.  Poor  Georges  Courteline  wept  all 
the  time  we  were  there  —  cried  for  Paris. 
But  I  had  a  royal  time  —  was  handsomely 
entertained.  The  Thames  scenery  is  not 
to  be  surpassed.  What  beautiful,  verdant 


62  M.  Catulle  Mendes 

vistas  stretching  away  to  skies  of  mellow 
gold!  What  luxury  of  landscape,  fit  for  the 
romances  of  the  Knights  of  the  Grail! 
London  seemed  to  me  simply  an  immense 
long  village  that  never  becomes  a  city. 
You  say  to  yourself:  'It  is  not  attractive 
now,  but  at  the  next  street  it  will  be  mag- 
nificent!' It  always  remains  a  big,  homely 
town 

"I  am  astonished  at  the  littleness  of  con- 
temporary literary  genius  in  France.  In 
my  opinion,  it  is  due  to  our  military  regime. 
To  pass  three  years  in  the  barracks,  is 
the  literary  death  of  a  young  man.  Look 
at  Germany!  She  has  long  had  the  mili- 
tary regime,  and  has  had  no  one  since 
Goethe.  We  began  imitating  her  system 
after  1870,  and  now  we  have  the  same 
blight.  I  have  just  received  a  letter  from 
a  young  friend  who  is  serving  his  term  in 
camp.  He  is  in  the  depths  of  despair.  He 
is  afraid  he  will  have  no  talent  of  any  kind 
left 

"Yes,  I  know  some  consider  me  a  facile 
and  prolific  writer,  but  do  you  know  it  is 
the  hardest  thing  in  the  world  for  me  to 


M.  Catulle  Mendes  63 

write?  I  lock  myself  in  my  study  soon 
after  noon.  After  having  smoked  and  idled 
about  for  an  hour,  I  commence  work.  The 
first  sixty  minutes  I  can  do  little.  It  seems 
as  if  I  can  never  get  to  the  bottom  of  the 
first  page.  Afterward  it  goes  along  better. 
I  stop  at  five  or  six.  And  the  remarkable 
thing  is  that  writing  becomes  harder  for  me 
the  older  I  grow  and  the  more  I  write. 
Now,  to-night,  I  am  to  do  thirty  lines  for 
the  Journal  about  a  little  play  at  La  Cigale. 
You  cannot  believe  how  those  thirty  lines 
haunt  me.  I  do  not  feel  now  that  I  can 
possibly  do  them.  I  haven't  the  slightest 
idea  what  I  shall  say.  I  assure  you  I  am 
thoroughly  unstrung  about  it." 

The  subject  changes  to  Wagner. 

"I  recall,  as  if  it  were  yesterday,  the  first 
time  I  met  Wagner.  I  was  a  stripling  of 
seventeen  and  was  launching  the  Revue 
Fantaisiste.  It  was  in  1861.  I  was  looking 
about  for  talent  —  for  contributors.  A 
friend  told  me  of  Wagner  —  Wagner  was 
then  in  Paris  —  and  gave  me  some  of  his 
verse.  I  saw  in  the  author  just  the  kind 
of  material  I  wished.  I  was  anxious  to  get 


64  M.  Catulle  Mendes 

him  to  collaborate  with  us  in  the  Revue. 
My  friend  took  me  to  call  on  him.  Wagner 
was  living  on  the  second  floor,  I  remember. 
When  we  went  in,  he  was  at  work  compos- 
ing and  writing  at  the  piano.  I  made  known 
my  wants. 

"  'Do  you  know  my  music?'  he  asked. 

"'No,'  I  said,  'but  I  have  read  your 
poems. ' 

"He  made  an  earnest  gesture,  and  re- 
plied, like  a  symbolist: 

"  '£"  est  la  m<>me  chose'  (it  is  one  and  the 
same  thing). 

"A  beautiful  response,  was  n't  it?  I  shall 
never  forget  it.  '£"  est  la  m^rne  chose.' 
Beautiful!  Significant! 

"We  were  ever  after  the  best  of  friends. 
About  ten  years  later  my  wife  and  I  went 
to  Lucerne  and  passed  three  months  with 
him.  Villiers  de  1'Isle — Adam  was  with  us. 
Those  three  months  were  the  happiest  I 
have  ever  known.  We  stayed  at  a  hotel 
near  Wagner's  villa.  Villiers  and  I  walked 
about  a  great  deal.  As  we  strolled,  the 
people  took  off  their  hats  and  bowed  rever- 


M.  Catulle  Mendes  65 

entially  to  us,  and  Villiers  would  turn  to 
me  and  say: 

"  '  What  the  devil  is  the  matter  with  these 
imbeciles?'  ' 

"  We  found  out  at  length  that  the  king  of 
Bavaria  was  expected  on  a  visit  —  'incog* 
—  to  Wagner,  and  the  Lucerners  had  mis- 
taken me  for  the  king,  and  Villiers  for 
Prince  —  Somebody  —  his  companion. 

"Wagner  worked  mornings.  We  joined 
him  at  two  in  the  afternoon,  and  spent  the 
rest  of  the  day  with  him.  We  often  found 
him  in  his  wrapper  at  work  —  playing  the 
piano  with  his  left  hand  and  jotting  down 
notes  and  words  with  his  right.  He  was 
very  methodical  —  regular  in  his  habits. 
They  may  say  what  they  please,  but  all  men 
of  genius  are  like  that. 

"What  an  entertaining  host  —  Wagner! 
I  have  never  seen  his  equal  —  hospitable, 
open,  enthusiastic,  informal.  He  took  us 
all  around  Switzerland,  and  we  could  hardly 
succeed  in  spending  50  centimes.  He 
paid  everything.  He  had  the  best  rooms 
in  the  hotels  engaged  ahead\  and  all  bills 


66  M.  Catulle  Mendes 

receipted  in  advance.  We  had  the  choicest 
of  everything.  Nothing  was  too  good  for 
us. 

"Opposite  the  Grutli,  he  said  to  us: 
'Rossini  was  the  most  voluptuously  en- 
dowed of  all  composers.' 

"Wagner  was  then  fifty-six  or  fifty-seven 
years  of  age, and  the  greatest  romp  you  ever 
heard  of.  Often,  when  he  saw  us  coming, 
he  would  jump  out  of  the  window  of  the 
first  floor  into  the  garden,  in  order  to  wel- 
come us  the  quicker.  Villiers  was  playing 
ball  with  Wagner's  dog  one  day,  and  the 
dog  accidentally  bit  him  in  the  hand.  Vil- 
liers had  to  go  about  with  his  hand  tied  up. 
Wagner  pretended  that  the  dog  was  mad, 
and  that  Villiers  was  a  victim  of  hydropho- 
bia. Sometimes  when  Villiers  and  I  en- 
tered the  garden,  Wagner  would  run  to  the 
nearest  tree  and  climb  it  in  playful  pre- 
tension that  Villiers  was  an  enraged  crea- 
ture seeking  whom  he  might  devour.  A 
perfect  tomboy! 

"Wagner  was  the  most  amusing,  charm- 
ing man  I  ever  knew.  The  days  I  passed 


M.  Catulle  Mendes  67 

with  him  have  been  the  best  of  my  life. 
What  a  grand  and  simple  soul! 

"I  have  always  tried  to  tell  our  French 
people  this,  but  they  called  me  a  'Wagner- 
phobe. '  " 


M.  Paul  Verlaine 


M.  Paul  Verlaine 

I  shall  try  to  give  you  the  little  scene  in 
the  naturalistic  style  —  not  through  the 
prisms  of  imagination  nor  the  spectacles  of 
moralization. 

Place  —  Cafe  du  Soleil.  Time  —  half  past 
five  p.  m.  I  have  come  here  to  get  a 
glimpse  of  the  greatest  living  *French  Bo- 
hemian poet  (unless  you  care  for  any  rea- 
son to  except  Richepin).  I  have  brought 
along,  as  a  Bohemian  companion,  Riche- 
pin's  abominable  "Le  Pave,"  which  has 
been  loaned  me  by  a  Bohemian  student.  In 
the  corner  nearest  Notre  Dame  is  Verlaine. 
I  sit  down  at  a  stand  just  opposite  him  — 
ten  feet  away  —  and  pretend  to  be  reading 
my  book.  His  faithful  glass  of  absinthe  is 
at  his  right  hand.  He  has  as  yet  merely 
sipped  of  it.  It  is  too  early  in  the  day  for 
him  to  be  drunk.  He  is  engaged  in 

*Written  not  long  before  his  death. 


72  M.  Paul  Verlaine 

writing,  smoking  an  old  pipe,  and  reading 
newspapers.  He  glances  up  and  down  the 
columns  of  the  journals  in  a  rather  keen, 
energetic  fashion,  as  if  seriously  eager  to 
glean  their  contents. 

Ablack  slouch  hat  is  drawn  down  over  his 
ears.  His  coat  collar  is  turned  up,  for  the 
weather  is  not  warm.  He  has  on  a  dark 
blue  coat,  muddy-hued  trousers,  low  shoes 
and  grayish  socks. 

His  spectacles  ride  the  end  of  his  nose, 
and  whenever  he  looks  away,  he  looks  over 
them.  His  moustache  and  beard  are  griz- 
zled, ill-combed,  dirty.  To  judge  from  his 
rather  full  face,  one  would  say  that  he  is 
in  a  good  state  of  health.  His  eyes  are 
small  and  bright.  They  twinkle  —  snap  — 
with  intelligence.  Their  color  seems  to 
be  a  bluish  gray.  His  nose  is  retrousse  — 
very.  The  back  of  his  neck  and  head  — 
reflected  in  the  mirror  behind  him  —  has 
evidently  just  been  cared  for  by  a  barber, 
and  presents  a  trimmed,  oiled  and  prosper- 
ous appearance. 

He  looks  his  age  —  about  fifty.  Every 
few  moments,  he  lays  aside  his  newspaper, 


M.  Paul  Verlaine  73 

and  writes  several  lines.  Then  he  resumes 
his  reading.  At  a  stand  at  his  left  and  a 
little  in  front  of  him  —  not  more  than  four 
feet  away  from  his  face  —  are  three  men 
drinking  absinthe,  and  keeping  up  a  quiet 
disturbance.  Two  of  them  are  young  — 
one  a  well-dressed,  fine-looking  fellow. 
The  third  is  about  fifty-five,  and  is  a  type 
of  that  Latin  Quarter  Bohemianism  which 
one  sees  around  the  Place  Maubert  and  at 
the  Pere  Lunette.  He  is  a  stale  gamin  who 
would  have  been  a  fit  subject  for  Gavarni. 
The  old  codger's  face  is  unshaven  and  un- 
washed. The  well-dressed  young  man, 
with  playful  rudeness,  slaps  him  on  the 
cheek  and  pours  a  glass  of  water  on  his  bald 
pate. 

Verlaine  laughs  at  their  performances. 
The  old  gamin  tries  to  kiss  Verlaine's 
hand  in  veneration  —  Verlaine  resists  — 
the  gaffer  finally  succeeds.  He  closely 
watches  Verlaine  write.  He  takes  one  of 
the  written  sheets  and  begins  reading  it. 
Verlaine  gets  up  and  snatches  it  back, 
exclaiming:  " Laissez-moi  fa!"  (Let  that 
alone.)  He  continues  his  scribbling,  but 


74  M.  Paul  Verlaine 

keeps  an  amused  eye  on  his  frolicking 
neighbors.  At  a  stand  at  his  right  are  four 
or  five  students  and  two  or  three  filles  (girls) 
of  the  Quarter.  One  of  the  girls  is  red- 
cheeked,  pretty,  and  is  sporting  an  attrac- 
tive toilet.  She  is  smoking  a  cigarette. 
She  comes  over  to  the  Verlaine  party. 
The  well-dressed  young  man  clasps  her  in 
a  long  and  ardent  embrace  —  lips  to  lips. 
She  sits  down  in  front  of  Verlaine,  and 
orders  a  gum  absinthe. 

In  fifteen  minutes  the  Verlaine  group 
breaks  up.  He  lifts  himself  from  his  seat, 
puts  his  "flying  sheets"  in  his  pocket,  and 
leaves  on  the  table  his  writing  equipment 
and  his  absinthe.  He  limps  toward  me 
with  his  cane,  and  shakes  hands  with  a  man 
who  is  writing  verses  at  a  stand  just  at  my 
side.  Verlaine  scans  him:  "Trying  to 
compose  something  that  does  not  go?"  His 
voice  is  low,  soft,  pleasant  —  that  of  a  man 
of  culture.  He  looks  at  me  and  laughs  a 
little,  as  if  he  half  understood  that  I,  a  new- 
comer in  these  haunts,  was  watching 
him.  He  slowly  drags  his  diseased  leg 


M,  Paul  Verlaine  75 

past  my  table  with  difficulty  and  some  pain. 
I  see  his  clothes  near  at  hand  —  they  are 
poor  and  soiled.  He  hobbles  along,  and 
every  one  in  the  cafe  manifests  deference 
and  respect  toward  him.  He  remarks  that 
he  will  soon  be  back  —  and  moves  out  of 
the  front  door. 

Such  is  an  hour  passed  with  Paul  Ver- 
laine in  one  of  his  three  homes  —  cafe,  hos- 
pital and  prison.  He  will  return  here  to 
this  cafe  in  half  an  hour,  spend  his  even- 
ing, get  drunk,  and  his  Bohemian  friends 
will  help  him  reach  his  bed  in  some  miser- 
able den  of  darkness.  To-morrow  after- 
noon he  will  come  back  for  the  same  pro- 
gramme. 

This  is  the  daily  life  of  the  celebrated 
Bohemian  poet  of  Paris  —  of  the  stanzaist 
who  has  touched  the  rigid  French  rhyme 
with  the  rarest  of  delicate  and  vibrant  ges- 
tures—  who  has  found  incomparably  dainty 
shades  and  tints  in  the  rhythms  of  the 
French  language. 

He  is  the  author  of  "Sagesse,"  which  is 
composed  of  some  of  the  most  genuinely 


j6  M.  Paul  Verlaine 

religions — Christian  —  verse  known  to 
French  belles-lettres.  Bat  he  is  more  fa- 
mous, perhaps,  for  having  written  some  of 
the  most  depraved  poetry  known  to  any 
literature. 


M.  Coppee 


M.  Coppee 


He  lives  right  among  some  of  the  humble 
people  he  loves  so  well  —  away  at  the  south 
end  of  the  Faubourg  Saint-Germain  —  Rue 
Oudinot  12.  It  is  a  ward  that  looms 
with  hospitals,  and  shines  with  the  gilded 
summit  of  the  Hotel  des  Invalides.  This 
fact  perhaps  explains  in  part  why  hospitals 
and  the  Invalides  figure  so  abundantly  in 
the  verse  and  prose  of  this  famous  writer 
on  whom  we  happen  to  be  calling  this 
morning. 

We  enter  from  the  street  into  a  poor 
court  which  suggests  chickens,  a  midwife 
always  "of  the  first  class,"  and  a  thrifty 
concierge  who  is  betimes  a  tailor.  Likely 
a  great  cat  will  be  lounging  about  in  a 
lordly  way,  for  M.  Coppee  is  fond  of  cats. 
What  a  plain  doorway,  this  one  at  the  right 
where  we  are  ringing!  And  what  a  loud, 
clanging  noise  the  bell  makes!  It  is  a  one- 
79 


80  M.  Coppee 

story  house  and  seems  very  low  and  small. 
The  door  opens,  and  we  traverse  two  or 
three  rooms  which  are  modest,  but  which 
glisten  from  scrubbing  as  if  a  Dutch  servant 
were  about  the  place. 

We  find  the  poet  in  a  red  dressing  sack 
— staringly  red.  He  is  smoking  cigarettes, 
of  course,  and  habitually  throws  a  stub 
into  the  grate  by  way  of  emphasis  to 
an  exclamation  point  or  a  period.  How  he 
makes  one  feel  at  home!  As  he  talks,  he 
sits  at  his  desk,  or  lounges  on  his  huge, 
inviting  sofa,  or  walks  back  and  forth  or 
up  to  you  and  away.  His  conversation 
smacks  of  the  Paris  chronique,  and  the 
current  popular  words  are  in  his  mouth  —  a 
little  very  effective  and  picturesque  slang 
included. 

His  cult  of  the  Humble  is  genuine;  he 
feels  at  home  among  them.  Still  this  does 
not  prevent  him  from  being  sought  after  in 
the  aristocratic  salons  of  Paris.  He  will 
be  saying,  for  instance : 

"Yes,  I  have  been  pretty  sick  —  caused 
by  catching  cold  at  the  Princess  Mathilde's 
the  other  day.  O,  I  suffered  terribly  —  I 


M.  Coppee  81 

do  n't  know  what  the  doctor  really  thought 
—  perhaps  he  thought  I  would  not  pull 
through.  And  I  am  so  busy  nowadays, 
too.  You  know  I  'm  one  of  the  pauvres 
diables  who  have  to  earn  their  bread  with 
their  pens,  and  can't  afford  the  luxury  of 
being  sick  long.  It  's  hard  work,  this  pen 
work,  but  I  'm  thankful  that  I  have  to  de- 
pend no  more  on  a  little  government  posi- 
tion where  you  just  earn  enough  to  live 
and  a  little  too  much  to  starve,  vous  savez. 
O,  I  served  in  that  galere  for  several  years. 
Man  Dieu,  quelle  corvee!  They  ask  me  if 
it  is  worse  than  the  publishers.  Yes,  I 
know  about  the  publishers.  We  authors  are 
resigned  in  France,  despite  all  their  abuses, 
real  and  imagined.  But  what  can  be  done? 
Nothing  —  it  's  utterly  useless  to  kick  out 
of  the  traces.  There  has  been  only  one 
French  author  who  made  publishers  do  as 
he  wanted  them  to  do  —  handled  them  with 
an  iron  glove  in  fact  —  that  was  Hugo.  .  , 
"Personally,  I  have  no  complaints  on  the 
subject.  You  see  I  dabble  in  several  differ- 
ent literary  genres.  Now  and  then  the 
Theatre  Fran<pais  or  the  Odeon  takes  a 


82  M.  Coppee 

drama  from  me.  Then  I  write  my 
chroniques  for  the  Journal.  Then  there 
are  my  stories  for  newspapers  and  maga- 
zines. And  then  my  verse.  I  have  several 
strings  to  my  bow,  poor  as  they  may  be.  I 
do  n't  think  I  write  as  much  poetry  as  I 
used  to  —  perhaps  it  does  not  bring  in  as 
much  money  as  the  other  things.  And 
then  I  was  fond  of  the  romance — songs  — 
but  the  romance  has  become  rather  old  fash- 
ioned in  France.  The  modern  cafe  chan- 
tant  songs  —  the  chat  noir  songs  —  all  that 
is  the  mode  to-day.  It  is  rigolo  as  the  boys 
say,  but  of  course  it  is  n't  poetry. 

"I  am  ultra  with  respect  to  many  import- 
ant living  questions.  I  know  I  write  much 
that  many  people  only  dare  to  think.  But 
I'm  not  a  k progressiste*  in  all  things — in 
the  matter  of  the  reform  of  French  ortho- 
graphy, for  instance.  O,  par  exemple!  I 
cannot  stomach  that.  Think  of  such  a 
massacre  as  that  would  be  of  our  classic 
French  verse  —  six  masculine  rhymes  fol- 
lowing each  other,  and  all  that  sort  of 
thing!  How  much  do  we  really  care  be- 
cause many  people  can't  spell  well?  When 


M.  Coppee  83 

I  was  a  young  man  and  used  to  get  love 
letters  from  the  girls,  did  I  love  any  one  of 
them  the  less  because  she  wrote  me,  Je 
theme,  instead  of  Je  faimel  Not  a  bit  of  it. 
I  remember  writing  a  poem  once  about  a 
sweet  little  blonde  whom  I  was  fond  of  at 
the  time,  and  in  the  poem  I  insisted  that — 

'  J'aime  tes  fautes  d'orthographe. '  ' 
In  this  free  and  easy  style  M.  Coppee  runs 
on.  He  is  frequently  taken  for  a  commer- 
cial traveler  in  the  country  hotels  where  he 
stops  when  out  in  the  provinces  of  France. 
He  loves  to  idle  about  in  the  hotel  offices 
and  smoke  and  tell  stories  with  everybody. 
Very  fond  is  he  of  the  little  theatres  in  the 
suburbs  of  Paris  —  in  those  places  of  hum- 
ble entertainment  where  human  life  and 
character  are  seen  in  their  plain  and  naked 
truth.  In  such  resorts  he  finds  the  inci- 
dents and  types  which  he  can  weave  into 
fontes  that  draw  tears  from  mild  eyes.  In 
that  simple  class  of  life  he  was  born  and 
reared,  and  he  is  ever  happy  to  revert  to 
the  days  of  his  insignificant  youth.  It 
reminds  one  of  the  charming  remark  of 
Delphine  Gay:  "You  always  keep  a  little 


84  M.  Coppee 

of  the  political  opinion  you  had  when  you 
were  a  pretty  woman." 

As  we  sit  here  in  the  study  of  M.  Coppe"e 
and  look  at  his  books  and  pictures,  and 
catch,  through  the  window,  a  glimpse  of  his 
little  garden,  we  think  perhaps  of  his  latest 
chronique — that  one  which  we  were  read- 
ing and  laughing  over  yesterday.  It 
rambled  on  in  this  way: 

"Yes,  I  have  seen  many  public  fetes,  and 
still  I  am  not  very  old.  May  i,  1847,  was 
one.  I  was  five.  My  father  carried  me 
around  Paris  on  his  back,  poor  man.  When 
we  were  over  by  the  Tuileries,  Louis- 
Philippe  came  out  on  the  balcony,  and 
everybody  shouted,  '  Vive  le  roi!'  In  a 
year  he  had  to  fly  from  town  in  a  fiacre.  I 
was  so  young  I  did  n't  know  much  about 
it  —  I,  with  a  corner  of  my  shirt  appearing 
through  a  hole  in  the  rear  of  my  culotte. 
In  1848  I  saw  the  Tree  of  Liberty  planted 
near  our  house.  The  godmother  of  the  oc- 
casion was  Julia  the  Oyster-Opener.  She 
opened  the  oysters  in  a  neighboring  inn, 
and  did  not  have  a  reputation  as  a  dragon 
of  virtue.  When  I  was  a  starving  govern- 


M.  Coppee  85 

ment  employee,  I  utilized  the  fete  days  in 
running  out  into  the  country  with  my  little 
' connatssance. '  I  never  had  any  money 
of  my  own  for  gala  occasions,  but  I  had 
a  big  silver  watch  on  which  the  Mont  de 
Pie"te  used  to  lend  me  fifteen  francs.  So 
she  and  I  would  go  and  dine  at  Ve"15zy's — 
in  that  green  arbor  where  the  spiders  drop 
into  your  soup." 


M.  Anatole  France 


M.    Anatole   France 

M.  France  is  a  delicious  philosopher  and 
lover.  His  novels  charm  especially  the 
Parisiennes.  The  delicate  cut  of  his  para- 
graphs, the  cologne  of  his  sentiment,  the 
calmly  disquieted  grace  of  his  philosophy, 
trail  tremors  of  curiosity  and  aesthetic 
satisfaction  through  the  hearts  of  his 
feminine  readers. 

M.  Bourget  has  become  too  difficult, 
complex,  abstruse  for  women.  He  has  lost, 
to  a  great  degree,  the  enraptured  favour 
of  those  Paris  ladies  who  love  to  skim  and 
dip  the  wings  of  their  literary  sensibilities 
in  the  surfaces  of  Frenvh  fiction.  So,  M. 
France  is  probably  to-day  the  favourite 
romancer  of  these  dainty  dames.  You  find 
the  reason  for  it  in  his  savourous  simplicity 
— in  the  relish  of  his  not  attempting  aston- 
ishing—  immense  —  feats  as  a  novelist. 

And,  personally,  M.  France  merits  his 
89 


90  M.  Anatole  France 

renown.  For,  the  belletristic  French- 
women rave  about  him — about  the  enchant- 
ment of  his  conversation  and  manners.  He 
knows  how  to  satisfy  their  desire  for  melli- 
fluous courtlinesses  of  attention,  how  to  per- 
fume their  thoughts  with  emotions,  how  to 
add  vistas  of  old  gold  and  richly  faded  scar- 
lets and  purples  to  the  realms  of  their  fan- 
cies. I  have  seen  Parisiennes  fold  their  frail 
and  scented  fingers  in  pinnacles  of  beatific 
despair  in  their  endeavors  to  express  the 
delight  they  have  experienced  at  the  hands 
of  this  indolent  skeptic. 

The  industrious  indolence  of  his  nature 
spreads  a  veil  of  repose  across  his  chapters. 
His  cult  of  doing  little  is  aristocratic  and 
artistic.  He  toils  at  what  he  pleases  —  at 
novels,  to  be  sure,  but  only  when  the  mood 
t>ids  him. 

Then  there  is  restfulness,  too,  in  his 
mildly  agitated  and  optimistic  skepticism. 
It  is  light,  yet  amazingly  daring.  He  says 
the  most  unexpected,  revolutionary,  "im- 
possible" things,  and  they  have  such  a  cer- 
tain aspect  or  measure  of  truth,  such  a  per- 
suasive and  delectable  indifference,  that 


M.  Anatole  France  91 

you  do  not  rebel.  On  the  contrary,  you 
let,  with  resigned  pleasure,  your  conscious- 
ness be  titillated  by  the  entertainment  of 
the  surprise  —  of  the  unconventional  bold- 
ness—  of  his  religious  dilettantisme,  for  ex- 
ample. 

I  have  used  the  "word  religious,"  since  M. 
France  has  contributed  to  the  religious  evo- 
lution in  recent  French  literature.  Reli- 
gion—  ascetic,  aesthetic,  erotic  —  is  a  main 
subject  with  him.  The  epoch  which  he  is 
especially  fond  of  is  the  Preraphaelite.  The 
passions  of  the  saints,  the  erring  caprices- 
of  nuns,  monastic  purity  and  elevation 
along  the  severe,  vertical  lines  of  the  Fra 
Angelico  art,  freely  tempt  the  courteous 
fervor  of  his  notice. 

The  little  villa  which  he  has  recently 
taken  possession  of  in  the  Villa  Said  is  dec- 
orated with  art  objects  of  the  Preraphaelite 
and  post  —  Preraphaelite  centuries.  There 
are  quaint  and  prim  pictures  of  the  Van 
Eyck  school,  old  carved  oaken  doors  from 
Tours,  ancient  chimney  mantels  from 
Venice.  There  are,  too,  Italian  ceiling 
pieces  that  recall,  with  their  rosy  cherubs 


92  M.  Anatole  France 

and  gay,  flowered  designs,  the  bridal  cham- 
bers in  the  hostelries  of  Lombardy. 

To  return  to  the  personal  subject  of  our 
portrait.  Of  the  literary  men  I  have  met 
in  Paris,  M.  France  has,  in  truth,  the  most 
elegant  presence  and  style.  Their  polish 
would  almost  seem  overdone  were  they  not 
relieved  by  his  moods  and  gestures  of 
vague  indulgence  and  unfinished  ease.  He 
is  clothed  in  an  abundant  suavity,  in  a  soft 
luxury  of  bearing.  He  has  a  mellow  voice 
of  gold.  His  large,  liquid,  dark-brown 
eyes  bespeak  his  gentleness.  He  is  doux, 
infinitely  doux,  the  French  say. 

The  curious  feature  of  his  social  inter- 
course is  that  he  now  and  then  forgets  you 
and  himself,  and  floats  into  the  mystic 
domains  of  his  thoughts  and  fancies.  Fas- 
cinating indeed  is  this  quietly  ecstatic  spec- 
tacle of  a  man  who  is  absorbed  in  you  and 
in  your  modern  topic  of  conversation  one 
moment,  while  the  next  finds  him  ut- 
terly oblivious  of  the  present,  and  away  off 
in  another  clime,  in  another  age,  pursuing 
some  Thai's  vision  or  some  Platonic  theme, 


M.  Anatole  France  93 

as  he  treads  the  incense  fields  of  his  ro- 
manesque  imagination. 

I  have  seen  him  escorting  visitors,  with 
all  his  devotion  of  genial  courtesy  and  in- 
terest, from  his  study  to  his  street  door  in 
the  Villa  Said,  and  suddenly  wandering  into 
some  room  under  the  wand  of  a  momentary 
whim,  and  wholly  disappearing  from  view. 
His  callers  were  by  no  means  offended. 
They  were  charmed  thus  to  fade  from  his 
attention  without  the  awkward  ennui,  the 
graceless  friction,  of  a  goodby  ceremony. 
He  had  already  forgotten  that  he  had  been 
interrupted  —  that  his  forenoon  had  been 
half  lost.  It  is  this  amiable  haze  of 
Lethean  revery,  this  sweetening  impres- 
sionistic atmosphere  of  poetic  ideality,  that 
he  makes  vibrate  across  his  pages  of  sub- 
tile speculation  and  aromatic  irreverence. 

Although  M.  France  has  a  reputation 
which  is  compounded  of  the  literary  and  the 
social,  and  is  truly  said  to  be  the  chief  at- 
traction in  one  or  two  of  the  Paris  salons, 
he  will  deny  to  you  any  social  role  what- 
ever. He  will  remark:  "I  made  the  tour 


94  M.  Anatole  France 

of  the  world  of  salons  —  a  sort  of  Sindbad 
—  a  few  years  ago,  and  then  retired  into 
my  den.  I  wished  to  ascertain  what  they 
were  like.  One  has  to  do  that  kind  of 
thing  in  France.  I  am  fond  of  solitude, 
and  I  do  not  pretend  to  photograph  with 
my  pen  the  types  and  affairs  of  real  life. 
The  nervousness  connected  with  the  effort 
of  writing  causes  me  to  court  isolation.  I 
have  no  cenacle  about  me.  If  I  had,  I 
should  not  admit  it,  because  that  would 
imply  a  subordination  in  those  who  come 
to  see  me." 

M.  France  is  scarcely  fifty-five.  Among 
the  young  literary  men  of  Paris  he  has 
only  friends  and  admirers.  Among  the 
older  men  he  has  three  or  four  enemies,  but 
they  are  charmed  enemies. 


M.  Jules   Lemaitre 


M.   Jules    Lemaitre 

M.  Lemaitre  is  not  tall.  He  is  com- 
pactly built.  His  vivid  little  bluish  eyes 
scintillate  from  a  well-developed  head.  He 
has  high  cheek  bones,  and  a  short,  thin 
growth  of  reddish  whiskers.  His  hair  is 
turning  gray. 

Although  he  works  in  an  atelier,  he  is 
never  a  painter  or  a  sculptor:  he  is  always 
a  literary  man.  He  writes  with  his  face 
toward  the  great  glass  front  of  a  light- 
flooded  apartment  dignified  by  lofty  tapes- 
tried walls.  "Yes,"  he  will  say  as  you 
take  a  seat  by  his  desk,  "I  like  light  — 
plenty  of  it.  And  I  am  fond  of  walking  to 
and  fro,  a  cigarette  in  hand." 

Books  are  piled  on  his  table  in  such  a 
manner  that  he  is  left  small  space  for  writ- 
ing. A  terra-cotta  bust  of  Renan  casts  its 
mild  eyes  over  the  unpretending  penates 
about  you,  while  behind  it  six  or  seven  bas- 
97 


98  M.  Jules  Lemaitre 

reliefs  are  hung  in  a  row,  two  of  them 
representing  Goujon's  nymphs  of  the  Seine. 
Below  the  bust  will  be  leaning  perhaps  a 
bicycle,  for  M.  Lemaitre  is  a  devotee  of  the 
wheel.  He  will  soon  bid  you  come  and  see 
his  little  garden.  You  follow  him  through 
a  tiny  salle-a-manger  and  then  through  a 
tapestried  fumoir  half-full  of  large  green 
plants.  The  miniature,  square,  high- 
walled  garden,  with  its  six  or  seven  trees, 
looks  beautiful  in  June.  "  I  work  out  here 
a  great  deal  in  the  warm  season,"  M. 
Lemaitre  will  remark.  "  I  am  a  son  of  the 
soil.  I  was  born  in  the  Loire  valley,  you 
know.  I  have  a  place  of  my  own  there 
where  I  go  every  spring,  and  stay  as  long 
as  my  duties  in  Paris  will  permit.  .  .  . 
I  adore  the  country,"  he  will  repeat  in  his 
quiet,  abashed  way. 

It  is  difficult  to  conceive  that  this  subtle 
critic,  this  dainty  and  scrupulous  play- 
wright, this  Parisian  master  of  sentimental 
psychology,  feminine  scepticism  and  refined 
irony  is,  and  will  ever  remain,  a  kind  of 
peasant  —  a  man  from  the  country.  Reared 
in  the  provinces,  and  faithful  to  his  early 


M.  Jules  Lemaitre  99 

companions  of  earth,  grass,  foliage  and 
skies,  M.  Lemaitre  affects  little  of  metro- 
politan polish  and  facile  fencing  of  manner. 
He  is  slow,  and  not  sure  of  speech;  he  has 
a  habit  of  nervously  folding  his  hands  and 
raising  them  toward  his  chin;  and  he  in- 
dulges in  an  embarrassed,  suppressed  laugh. 
Yet  while  he  is  a  proletaire,  — a  rustic,  — 
you  never  discover  in  his  pages  the  sun- 
light, the  fresh  air,  nature,  the  populace. 
His  literary  temperament,  his  intellectual 
qualities,  his  moral  susceptibilities,  are 
typically  and  admirably  Parisian  in  every 
signification  of  the  term. 

If  you  ask  him  about  the  contemporary 
French  theatre  and  literature,  he  will  say 
he  believes  that  the  "young  reviews  "  of 
Paris  are  regarded  with  too  much  import- 
ance by  foreign  critics  and  writers.  He 
will  express  the  fear  that  his  plays  are  not 
adapted  to  English  audiences,  since  they 
are  written  for  a  rather  eclectic  boulevard 
public,  and  probably  will  never  find  a  soil 
to  flourish  in  outside  the  national  capital. 
He  will  explain  his  regret  that  he  knows 
no  modern  language  save  his  own.  "  I  am 


ioo  M.  Jules  Lemaitre 

well  equipped  in  Latin,  and  fairly  so  in 
Greek.  I  tried  to  learn  one  or  two  living 
tongues,  but  when  it  came  to  mastering  a 
vocabulary  sufficient  for  practical  use,  I 
confess  I  had  not  the  courage  for  the  task. 
And,  furthermore,  I  was  educated  during 
the  Empire,  and  under  religious  auspices. 
Modern  languages  were  not  then  the  fashion 
in  France."  The  long  and  thorough  aca- 
demic training  of  M.  Lemaitre  throws  light 
on  the  fact  that  analytical  and  subtilizing 
processes  elbow  out  of  his  varied  produc- 
tions any  distinctly  original  creations  and 
exotic  conceptions.  "Yes,"  he  will  ob- 
serve, "I  shall  give  myself  almost  wholly 
to  the  theatre.  I  hardly  think  I  shall  write 
hereafter  any  sketches  of  my  contempo- 
raries. Every  time  I  publish  one  I  make  an 
enemy."  He  will  accompany  you  to  the 
door  in  a  modest,  shy  way  that  would  lead 
observers  to  suppose  that  you  were  noted, 
not  he. 

And  such  is,  at  home,  that  witty  con- 
noisseur and  clever  dilettante  and  scholar 
who,  more  than  anyone  just  now,  is  influ- 
encing French  fashions  and  tastes  in  the 


M.  Jules  Lemaitre  101 

matter  of  the  drama.  His  impressionistic 
species  of  dramatic  criticism  is  in  full  vogue 
in  Paris  nowadays.  His  style  is  everywhere 
delicate,  graceful,  entertaining,  irrespon- 
sible. He  neither  attempts  to  seize  the 
utmost  nor  embrace  the  whole.  And  yet 
he  has  as  much  as  anyone  a  nervous  and 
alert  curiosity.  He  lives  on  sensibilities, 
and  not  on  plastic  and  mobile  beauty  like  a 
Parnassian.  He  is  a  psychologist  —  an 
adept  and  cautious  dissector  with  scalpel  in 
hand.  In  discussion  he  is  virtually  unan- 
swerable, for  he  always  says:  "It  is  true 
that  I  am  not  able  to  comprehend  you  —  so 
much  the  worse  for  me."  To  anyone  who 
violently  assaults  his  books  and  literary 
methods,  M.  Lemaitre,  like  M.  Anatole 
France,  humbly  responds:  "  I  deeply  regret 
that  Monsieur  X despises  me  and  de- 
tests my  works.  He  has  me  at  an  immense 
disadvantage,  since  I  frankly  confess  that 
I  am  a  great  admirer  both  of  him  and  his 

writings."     As  Monsieur  X can  never 

claim  with  good  grace  before  the  public 
that  this  is  irony,  he  can  only  lapse  into 
silence  before  such  polite  geniality. 


IO2  M.  Jules  Lemaitre 

M.  Lemaitre  was  not  constituted  to  relish 
vast  souls.  Dante,  Shakespeare,  Goethe, 
Hugo  are  menus  too  tremendous  for  him. 
His  tastes  are  those  of  the  daintiest  gourmet. 
The  smallest  plat  seems  too  large  for  his 
appetite.  The  great  table  d'hote  plans  of 
learned  thought  and  speculation  frighten 
him.  He  shuns  the  long,  exotic  bills  of 
fare  of  every  kind  —  Tolstoiism,  Wagner- 
ism,  preraphaelitism.  It  is  true  he  endea- 
voured to  season  Ibsen  to  the  French  liking, 
yet,  afterward,  he  rather  pushed  away  that 
Scandinavian  dish  from  his  own  sight. 

Thus,  the  influence  of  M.  Lemaitre  is  of 
a  genuine  Parisian  stamp.  And,  for  similar 
reasons  in  part,  it  is  practically  confined  to 
the  things  of  our  time.  Unlike  his  fellow 
critics,  he  has  not  tissued  his  reputation 
out  of  studies  of  past  epochs.  It  is  a  fabric 
woven  of  the  life  around  him.  He  is  in- 
fatuated with  to-day.  No  French  writer  has 
prized  and  praised  our  abused  generation 
.as  much  as  he.  Yet,  strange  to  say,  he 
.has  not  identified  himself  with,  nor  wel- 
'Comed,  those  contemporary  impulses  and 


M.  Jules  Lemaitre  103 

modes  called  symbolism,  mysticism,  dtca- 
dentisme. 

Actuality  was  the  gist  of  his  claim  upon 
the  favor  of  the  French  Academy.  His 
"  Contemporains "  is  his  most  valuable 
production,  since  it  is  the  most  complete 
reflection  to  be  found  of  the  present  French 
epoch  in  so  far  as  the  epoch  is  Parisian. 
On  the  other  hand,  as  a  monument  of  pro- 
fessional criticism,  it  equals  the  work  of 
neither  Brunetiere,  Bourget  nor  Faguet.  It 
is  too  lackadaisical  and  amateurish,  as  the 
author  himself  would  be  first  to  avow. 

The  present  was  the  natural  and  proper 
background  for  his  impressionistic  talents 
to  play  upon.  As  is  well  known  he  stands 
for  the  impressionistic  method  in  the  art  of 
reviewing.  The  times  were  ripe  for  this 
method,  and  around  and  about  it  there  has 
grouped  a  sort  of  school  to  which  belong, 
in  reality,  the  young  and  serious  French 
critics.  Hence,  the  position  of  M.  Lemaitre 
as  a  commentator  is  incontestably  im- 
portant. 

And  he  has  virtually  carried  impression- 


IO4  M.  Jules  Lemaitre 

ism  to  the  stage,  for,  while  his  comedies 
have  failed  before  the  public  at  large,  they 
have  proved  of  marked  significance  to  re- 
viewers, and  form  a  noteworthy  factor  in 
the  complex  equation  of  the  French  theatre. 
Doubtless,  the  future  will  witness  him  at 
his  best  as  a  playwright,  since  he  intends 
gradually  to  confine  his  efforts  to  playmak- 
ing.  It  is,  therefore,  safe  to  assume  that 
his  series  of  dramatic  comments  known  as 
"Impressions  du  theatre,"  will  become 
more  and  more  diluted. 

The  personality  of  M.  Lemaitre  is  greater 
than  his  productions;  and  his  style  is  more 
interesting  than  his  ideas,  for  you  do  not 
think  of  him  as  having  ideas.  His  language 
is  pure  French  and  yet  the  most  modern. 
It  is  impressionistic  prose,  ondoyant  et  chat- 
oyant. Atmosphere  vibrates  across  it.  It 
pulsates  with  vitality.  His  paragraphs 
dance  before  the  eye  with  the  nervous 
piquancy  of  pointillisme.  Graced  with  a 
woman's  temperament,  M.  Lemaitre  has 
the  feminine  gift  of  saying  the  merest  any- 
thing in  a  diverting  manner.  And  he  freely 
heightens  his  effects  by  little  vistas  en- 


M.  Jules  Lemaitre  105 

livened  with  the  pyrotechnics  of  brilliant 
paradoxes. 

His  individuality  has  been  enriched  by 
the  variety  of  existences  which  he  has  led. 
For  he  was  first  a  peasant,  then  a  kind  of 
youthful  religious  recluse,  then  a  Normalien 
and  a  professor  in  the  provinces,  and  finally 
a  Renaniste  and  a  literary  artist  and  dilet- 
tante in  Paris.  More  than  any  of  his  criti- 
cal confreres  does  he  typify  the  average 
Parisian  of  our  decade.  He  believes  not, 
and  yet  is  incurably  inquisitive  about  every- 
thing that  is  new  and  French.  He  is  a 
tolerant  and  amiable  skeptic,  a  genial  iron- 
ist full  of  malicious  indulgence,  a  critic  who 
smothers  his  victim  into  silence  with  criti- 
cizing compliments,  and  who  gently  tries 
to  destroy  his  adversary  into  immortality. 

As  a  censor,  he  annihilates  nothing, 
champions  nothing,  explains  nothing.  He 
simply  appreciates.  For  him,  truth  does 
not  exist  because  it  constantly  transforms. 
Facts  appear  to  him  so  unstable  and  elastic 
that  they  are  only  fit  to  leave  fleeting  im- 
pressions. He  has  discovered  that  statis- 
tics and  great  arrays  and  perspectives  of 


io6  M.  Jules  Lemaitre 

thought  and  feeling  are  always  disproved 
and  illusory.  He  has  learned  that  the 
present  belies  the  past  and  that  to-morrow 
will  gainsay  both.  Why,  then,  should  one 
take  the  empty  trouble,  as  a  critical  scholar, 
to  attempt  colossal  age-defying  structures 
on  the  sand  plains  of  time?  And  he  has 
answered  the  question  for  himself  by  his 
impressionistic  cult  of  to-day. 

On  this  account  he  is  the  most  popular  of 
the  French  critics,  for  the  masses  are  only 
interested  in  their  own  generation.  His 
"  Contemporains "  is  seen  on  the  book 
shelves  of  all  the  little  foyers  of  Paris.  He 
has  vulgarized  his  themes  in  a  refined  and 
entertaining  way.  In  his  critical  volumes, 
the  careless,  general  reader  is  served 
to  autobiography,  revery,  sentimentality, 
esprit.  These  books  are  five  o'clock  teas 
where  the  author  is  pleased  to  tutoyer  his 
guests,  and  to  make  them  enjoy  their  host 
at  the  delicious  profit  and  flattered  expense 
of  their  absent  friends.  And  he  laces  up 
now  and  then  his  scrupulous  nonchalance 
with  a  consummate  paragraph,  or  an  expert 
excellence  of  some  kind,  that  causes  one  to 


M.  Jules  Lemaitre  107 

exclaim  with  regret,  "  Ah,  if  he  would  only 
keep  trying!" 

The  prevailing  element  of  timid  disqui- 
etude in  the  composition  of  his  tempera- 
ment is  counteracted  neither  by  a  romantic 
imagination,  nor  by  a  soothing  love  for 
history  (i.  e.  the  past)  as  in  the  instance 
of  Renan,  nor  by  a  fondness  for  philosophic 
calm  as  in  the  case  of  M.  Anatole  France. 
The  restlessness  of  M.  Lemaitre,  due  pri- 
marily to  his  life  of  inner  sensibilities,  is- 
therefore  more  extreme  than  theirs.  It  is- 
hyperaesthesia.  He  finds  no  sure  and  quiet 
place  to  lay  his  head  amid  the  world's  end- 
less whirlpool  of  vain  appearances  and  illu- 
sions. 

Hence,  his  existence  would  be  a  torture 
to  his  readers  and  himself  did  he  not  repose 
his  nervousness  on  the  pillows  of  irrespon- 
sibility, and  dip  the  fingers  of  his  excess- 
ively analytical  consciousness  in  the  pleas- 
ant surfaces  of  mere  impressionistic  sensa- 
tions. If  he  believed,  with  M.  Brunetiere, 
that  the  critic  should  have  an  ap6stolic 
mission,  an  accountable  duty,  constantly 
to  perform,  he  would  go  mad,  for,  having 


io8  M.  Jules  Lemaitre 

no  faith  in  self-assurance  or  mortal  infalli- 
bility, he  would  be  harrassed  to  death  by  the 
thought  that  he  must  prove,  and  by  the  fear 
that  he  had  not  expressed  the  whole  truth 
and  had  not  been  perfectly  just.  This  is  the 
fundamental  reason  why  his  pages  teem 
with  pasticcio  remarks  in  the  style  of  every- 
body, and  why  he  frequently  bursts  in 
through  opened  doors  and  gallops  down 
upon  deserted  camps. 

The  nature  of  the  influence  and  literary 
product  of  M.  Lemaitre  is  thus  both  logical 
and  self-contradictory.  In  any  comparison 
between  him  and  his  critical  colleagues,  he 
appears  nearest  the  truth  in  these  days 
simply  because  he  flees  the  notion  of  its 
absoluteness.  He  affirms  nothing  and  ac- 
cepts all.  He  denies  nothing  and  treats 
everything  with  a  cautious  reserve.  In 
affecting  no  philosophy,  he  is  most  a  phil- 
osopher. He  has  no  Christian  faith,  and 
still  possesses  a  genuine  religious  spirit. 
He  is  a  kind  of  diaphanous  mystic,  and  yet 
does  not  look  with  favor  on  mystic  cults. 
While  he  is  the  most  elegantly  frivolous  of 
his  confreres,  he  is,  nevertheless,  the  most 


M.  Jules  Lemaitre  109 

tender  and  human.  He  is  the  most  capri- 
cious and  evaporative  of  them  all,  and  still 
he  is  the  one  who  penetrates  our  inner 
selves  with  the  most  delicate  and  titillating 
directness  and  whose  presence  seems  to 
linger  with  us  the  longest.  He  walks  the 
prudent  ground  of  practical,  every-day 
life,  and  yet  he  is  the  most  sentimental  and 
fantastic  of  any  of  his  emulators.  He  is  a 
Parisian  of  the  Parisians,  and  still,  as  you 
see  him  at  a  premttre,  he  is  apparently  the 
only  countryman  in  Paris  save  M.  Sarcey. 
For,  as  a  rule,  he  is  carelessly  dressed,  his 
hat  is  ruffled,  his  beard  untrimmed.  His 
back  is  vaulted  like  a  ploughman's,  and  he 
always  shuffles  about  myopically  and  ill  at 
ease.  He  is  fond  of  effacing  himself  into  a 
corner  with  a  friend  and  slyly  whispering 
and  laughing  in  a  screwed-up,  microscopic 
way,  as  if  he  had  just  been  stealing  a  march 
on  some  overweening  agricultural  neigh- 
bour. 

In  M.  Lemaitre,  the  Academy  accepted 
little  else  than  a  fin  de  sihle  soul.  But  it  is 
an  opal  of  the  rarest  iridescence. 


M.  Huysmans 


M.  Huysmans 

A  quiet  apartment  in  the  palace  of  the 
French  Minister  of  the  Interior.  A  room 
furnished  in  green,  a  large  desk,  one  or  two 
sheets  of  paper,  plenty  of  leisure,  nothing 
apparently  to  do.  The  window  open,  a 
glimpse  of  green  branches,  a  silent  April 
afternoon. 

A  quiet  little  man  at  the  desk.  His  legs 
are  crossed  and  he  is  fumbling  a  ruler. 
His  small,  pointed  gray  beard  and  mus- 
tache are  neatly  clipped,  and  his  gray  hair 
is  geometrically  trimmed  a  la  Renaissance 
park  of  Versailles.  His  cranium  bulges  out 
at  the  sides.  He  has  a  rather  bright  eye 
and  a  squirrel  look. 

Not  a  suave,  facile  man  of  the  world.  A 
noiseless  talker  willing  to  talk,  but  not 
knowing  what  to  say  next.  No  ceremony, 
no  enthusiasm,  no  parade.  A  part  of  the 
time  he  scrapes  the  desk  with  his  ruler  like 
an  idle  boy  at  school. 
"3 


H4  M.  Huysmans 

He  chops  out  the  conversation  something 
like  this: 

"It  takes  me  two  years  to  ''document" 
myself  for  a  novel  —  two  years  of  hard 
work.  That  is  the  trouble  with  the  nat- 
uralistic novel  —  it  requires  so  much  docu- 
mentary care.  I  never  make,  like  Zola,  a 
plan  for  a  book.  I  know  how  it  will  begin 
and  how  it  will  end  —  that  's  all.  When  I 
finally  get  to  writing  it,  it  goes  along  rather 
fast  —  assez  vite. 

"  My  business  is  applying  naturalism  to 
Catholicism.  I  have  become  a  Catholic 
because  I  am  extremely  pessimistic.  The 
religious  people  differ  from  the  other  pes- 
simists only  in  that  they  annex  a  'future 
life  '  scheme.  Everything  is  going  to  the 
dogs.  There  is  a  great  deal  in  the  church 
that  is  a  fraud.  Its  miracles,  confessionals 
—  all  that  is  claptrap  and  absurd.  But  I 
enjoy  its  old  preraphaelite  spirit,  its  high 
animus,  its  art. 

"  In  my  next  novels  I  shall  study  church 
paintings  and  cathedrals.  Just  now  I  am 
at  work  at  the  cathedrals  of  Chartres  and 
Rheims.  I  am  studying  everything  about 


M.  Huysmans  115 

them  —  stones,  altars,  windows.  The  only 
thing  left  for  a  novelist  to  dig  into  is  Cath- 
olicism. The  relations  of  the  little  grocery 
girl  with  the  proprietor  of  the  wine-shop  on 
the  corner,  have  been  thoroughly  exploited. 
Nothing  remains  untouched  but  Catholi- 
cism and  its  art.  The  priests  are  btte  — 
they  have  killed  religious  art  —  we  have 
none  nowadays. 

"The  symbolists  and  neo-realists  are  a 
rather  poor  lot,  in  my  humble  opinion. 
There  can  't  be  any  idealism  in  all  that. 
The  only  effective  idealism  is  in  church 
mysticism.  Brunetiere  is  right:  Science  is 
bankrupted.  This  is  the  only  thing  in 
which  I  agree  with  him  —  and  I  do  n't  see 
how  that  has  happened.  Science  won't 
make  us  happy.  But  that  does  not  prevent 
Zola  from  being  the  greatest  of  them  all. 
What  a  tower  of  might! 

"The  psychologists  are  too  artificial  — 
necessarily  so.  They  can  't  tell  the  whole 
truth  —  they  can  only  tell  it  in  a  polite 
and  varnished  way.  Mon  Dieu!  the  old 
church  writers  could  beat  all  the  Bourgets 
and  Anatole  Frances  put  together. " 


n6  M.  Huysmans 

All  this,  and  more,  is  said  in  a  low  tone 
of  voice,  in  an  echoless,  independent,  reck- 
less way,  without  gestures  or  flourishes. 
M.  Huysmans  is  serious,  quizzical,  rever- 
ential, Bohemian.  He  mixes  religion,  slang, 
indifference,  realism,  mysticism,  hope,  de- 
spair—  all  —  in  a  determined  but  tranquil 
air  of  convinced  insouciance. 


M.  Drumont 


M.  Drumont 

A  lurid  editorial  sanctum  at  night.  A 
fiercely  red  grate  fire.  An  ominously  shaded 
red  lamplight.  A  nervous  occupant  —  a 
human  firebrand  in  flesh.  His  black  beard 
and  masses  of  wild  hair  agitating  in  violent 
excitement.  His  feverish,  red -rimmed 
eyes  smokily  bespectacled.  His  hirsute 
hands  flinging  in  the  air.  Jumpings  up  and 
down.  Leapings  to  and  fro.  Seethings, 
hissings,  boilings  of  rage,  hot,  sulphurous 
emissions  of  revenge.  A  fandango  of  Vesu- 
vian  frenzy.  Fire-eating  paradoxes  explod- 
ing across  scarlet  cataclysms.  The  echo  of 
terrorizing  c-r-r-aquements,  debacles — the 
Jews,  the  priests,  the  aristocrats,  the 
Rothschilds,  the  rastaquoueres,  the  vile 
Republican  plutocracy  —  out,  Messieurs  — 
they  will  all  come  to  direst  grief, 
not  next  century  but  this  century,  to- 
morrow, perhaps  this  very  night.  The 
119 


I2O  M.  Drumont 

masses  are  ready.  The  word  will  be  said 
—  the  match  lighted  —  and  you  will  see 
what  will  burn  up,  c-r-r-r-r-ouler,  disappear. 
Money  —  that  tyrant  of  the  ages!  Ah! 
Messieurs,  the  worm  turns  under  the  heels 
of  the  miserable  despots.  They  nearly 
crushed  out  the  people,  but,  thank  God  I 
we  shall  have  the  future.  The  past  can 
belong  to  that  hydra-headed  conspiracy. 
What  care  we  for  the  past?  It  is  only 
synonymous  with  an  infamous  compact  — 
the  Jews  mortgaging  homes,  the  politicians 
mortgaging  rights,  the  church  mortgaging 
souls.  The  priests  could  not  be  the  pawn- 
brokers, so  they  turned  that  trade  over  to 
the  Jews.  The  church  blessed  the  rich  in 
order  that  they  might  share  their  gains 
with  it  and  securely  keep  the  rest.  History 
is  the  record  of  the  party  of  the  first  part. 
Its  "progress  "  is  based  on  two  per  cent,  a 
month.  Its  "civilization"  is  the  product 
of  usurers  and  courtesans.  Out,  Messieurs/ 
In  the  Middle  Ages  they  scared  the  people 
into  submission  by  threatening  hell,  the 
devil,  religion.  Nowadays  they  try  to  scare 
us  with  jails,  guillotines,  the  law.  But  a 


M.  Drumont  121 

new  dawn  is  at  hand.  There  will  be  a  new 
day.  And  what  an  awakening!  I  feel  it  in 
my  bones !  It  will  amaze  you  —  it  will  amaze 
me.  It  may  be  bloodless  —  it  may  be  the 
bloodiest  revolution  ever  known  —  who  can 
tell?  It  may  be  death  to  you  and  to  me, 
but  let  it  come — dies  tree  —  for  it  will  be 
Justice!  The  Shylocks  will  have  to  pay  at 
last.  Everything  foretells  it.  Scandal  after 
scandal !  The  perpetual  falling  out  of  the 
thieves  among  themselves!  The  solemn- 
faced  farceurs  wrapped  in  the  cloaks  of 
law,  order,  conscience!  How  they  will 
dance  to  the  music  of  bombs!  The  Jews 
will  dodge  the  petards  on  the  pavement. 
The  bourgeois  will  hide  his  head  under  his 
bedclothes.  In  vain!  No  one  —  nothing 
—  will  escape.  The  wolves  at  our  throats! 
Think  of  the  millions  of  poor  devils  of  men 
without  bread  this  very  moment!  Starving! 
Begging  crumbs  from  the  plutocrats!  I  see 
it  every  day  of  my  life  —  you  see  it  —  men 
asking  the  privilege  of  working  on  a  dung 
heap.  And  this  has  been  true  of  countless 
generations,  protected  by  the  law,  blessed 
by  the  priests;  and  they  would  silence  us 


122  M.  Drumont 

by  proclaiming  that  it  is  the  mysterious 
order  of  Providence!  They  are  taking  our 
last  sou  to-day.  We  must  act.  To-morrow 
where  shall  we  get  a  morsel  of  food?  The 
dogs  will  lick  our  misery  in  the  streets,  and 
the  rich  will  roll  by  in  their  rubber-tire 
vehicles  and  smile  at  us  and  drink  their 
wine  out  of  human  skulls.  Do  you  suppose 
this  is  going  on  and  on?  That  our  sons 
will  always  black  the  boots  of  these  mon- 
sters and  our  daughters  always  be  their 
concubines, —  to  stop  hunger  from  gnaw- 
ing? Jamais !  Rather  a  thousand  times 
the  peace  of  death  to-morrow  —  at  once! 
The  kid-gloved  blackguards  —  the  diamond- 
spotted  villains!  They  have  ridden  to  the 
edge  —  they  will  ride  no  farther.  What  a 
Dance  of  Skeletons  when  it  comes!  It  will 
be  for  some  new  Orcagna  or  Holbein  to 
paint  —  this  fin  de  sihle  Brumaire  —  this 
Damnation  of  the  World  -  Faust  —  this 
apotheosis  of  blood,  debauch,  crime, 
chaos — ! 


M.    Hervieu 


M.   Hervieu 

It  was  a  September  evening  at  Saint 
Germain  —  Rue  Voltaire  —  under  the  frown- 
ing heights  of  the  old  chateau.  M.  Hervieu 
was  there  en  villegiature  that  year.  A  quiet 
town;  a  quiet  street;  a  quiet  apartment 
with  the  glass  doors  closed  that  led  into  the 
little  graveled  garden, for  the  chill  of  autumn 
was  on  the  air. 

The  servants  appeared  and  disappeared 
without  being  heard.  The  dinner  was  not 
hilarious  or  vivacious.  A  comfortable  still- 
ness haunted  us  over  the  black  coffee  in  the 
smoking-room,  while  M.  Octave  Mirbeau 
told  stories  of  priests,  and  M.  Remy  Saint- 
Maurice  detailed  curious  incidents  of  Paris 
life,  and  M.  Hervieu  mutely  and  leisurely 
punctuated  the  course  of  the  talk  with  char- 
acteristic comments. 

All  was  silent,  restful,  agreeable.  The 
accents  and  accords  of  sound  fell  to  a  muf- 
125 


126  M.  Hervieu 

fling  floor.  And  the  late  train  slipped  back 
to  Paris  in  stillness. 

Our  host,  in  his  noiseless  way,  seemed  to 
have  masked  the  occasion  and  muzzled  the 
night 

M.  Hervieu  is  one  of  the  five  or  six  great 
figures  among  the  French  writers  who  are 
between  thirty  and  forty  years  of  age.  He 
is  brainy  —  in  appearance,  the  brainiest 
of  any  young  Frenchman  I  have  met.  His 
cranium  is  very  visibly  laden  with  gray 
matter.  His  striking  head  —  striking  for  a 
sort  of  veiled  massiveness  —  easily  dom- 
inates his  rather  slight  body.  His  grayish 
eyes  are  heavy,  slow,  far  away.  He  has  a 
look  of  intellectual  solidity  —  indeed  of 
thickness,  of  denseness,  using  these  terms 
in  a  favorable  sense.  A  sad  muteness 
speaks  from  his  motionless  lips.  His  hand- 
writing, as  I  see  it  in  a  note  lying  before 
me,  is  compact,  tortuous  —  there  is  some- 
thing of  a  blind  cast  over  it.  He  is  by 
nature  neither  hopeful  nor  convinced.  He 
wears  a  silent  air  of  sadness  —  a  breastplate 
of  sentiment  —  for  he  is  a  pessimist.  The 
spectacle  of  civilization  has  no  bright  win- 


M.  Hervieu  127 

dows  of  faith  for  him.  Not  that  he  does 
not  believe  that  the  human  race  has  pro- 
gressed. But  it  takes  so  long  —  so  long. 

M.  Hervieu  is  apparently  a  student  both 
in  attitude  and  action.  His  head  is  pushed 
forward  from  his  shoulders;  his  neat,  thin 
fingers  seem  to  caress  each  leaf  with  book- 
ish fondness  as  they  slip  between  the  pages 
of  a  volume  in  quest,  for  instance,  of  a  cita- 
tion to  prove  an  argument. 

He  lives  in  the  Rue  Auber  by  the  Grand 
Opera,  right  in  the  center  of  that  Parisian 
life  which  he  loves  to  contemplate.  In  his 
study  you  hear  the  dull,  ceaseless  roar  of  car- 
riages sweeping  past  on  the  wood  pavement. 
His  books  are  piled  around  the  room  in 
a  sort  of  precise  disorder,  and  his  desk  is 
so  encumbered  with  material  that  the  small- 
est place  possible  is  left  him  for  writing. 

He  talks  to  you  there  with  an  echoless 
earnestness,  folding  his  hands  between  his 
knees  and  perhaps  around  a  white  handker- 
chief, as  he  leans  toward  you.  He  spoke 
to  me  one  day  of  his  almost  abnormal  pas- 
sion for  observing  men  and  things.  He 
said:  "If  an  accident  happens  in  the 


128  M.  Hervieu 

street,  I  rush  forward,  mix  with  the  throng, 
and  stay.  I  drink  in  the  scene  with 
quenchless  thirst.  This  passion  for  watch- 
ing the  world  makes  me  indolent.  I  put  off 
writing  until  the  last  moment  —  until  I  am 
forced  to  take  up  my  pen.  I  have  to  toil 
under  stress.  As  a  result,  I  write  a  novel 
in  three  months,  and  then  am  ill  two 
months.  I  began  '  L  'Armature  '  the  4th 
day  of  October,  1894,  and  finished  it  Janu- 
ary zoth  —  two  attacks  of  gout  being 
included  in  the  programme.  You  see  I  had 
to  commence  furnishing  the  copy  Decem- 
ber 15  for  the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes.  I 
worked  from  eight  till  noon,  and  from  one 
until  six.  Insomnia?  No,  fortunately,  I 
am  a  valiant  sleeper.  This  fashion  of  work- 
ing is  bad  for  the  health,  still  it  has  some 
advantages — it  gives  the  fever  of  life  to 
your  pages  —  your  hot  blood  flows  into 
them. 

'*  I  take  no  notes  (save  mental  ones,  of 
course)  in  preparing  to  write  a  novel.  No, 
I  do  not  put  living  people  in  my  books.  A 
lady  said  to  me  the  other  day:  'I  know 
every  person  in  'L  'Armature!"  '  Do  you, 


M.  Hervieu  129 

Madame?'  I  replied.  '  You  are  more  au 
courant  than  I,  for  I  was  not  aware  of  hav- 
ing painted  any  one  in  reality.'  " 

The  talent  of  M.  Hervieu  consists  pri- 
marily of  his  powers  of  observation  and  his 
forcible  style.  He  always  conceives  the 
general  plan  of  a  book  before  he  attempts 
to  confide  anything  to  ink.  He  first  makes 
a  full  outline  of  it  on  paper  and  then  goes 
over  the  outline  and  converts  it  into  better 
French.  He  finds  that  his  mind  uncon- 
sciously stores  up  many  data,  details,  im- 
pressions, so  that  for  his  purpose  his  pen  is 
ever  well  enough  provided  with  material  of 
this  sort. 

Of  the  symbolists,  M.  Hervieu  is  not  a 
disciple.  He  thinks  that  classifications  into 
schools  in  literature  are  merely  convenient 
things  with  which  to  cudgel  our  literary 
adversaries,  and  nurse  the  comfortable 
notion  that  "  only  my  friends  and  I  have 
genius  —  and  even  my  friends 
Every  one,  though,  is  to  some  extent  a 
symbolist.  What  is  M.  Hervieu's  Baron 
Safre  but  a  colossal  symbolic  figure? 

M.  Hervieu  was  born  at  Neuilly,  adjoin- 


130  M.  Hervieu 

ing  Paris,  in  1857.  He  was  educated  for 
the  law  and  also  for  a  diplomatic  career. 
In  1881,  he  was  appointed  Secretary  of  the 
French  Legation  in  the  city  of  the  Monte- 
zumas.  Thereupon,  he  gave  up  diplomacy, 
together  with  the  Napoleonic  code,  and 
went  into  fiction. 

M.  Hervieu  is  not  only  a  great  novelist, 
but  a  great  playwright.  "  Les  Paroles 
Restent "  met  with  a  highly  satisfactory 
reception  at  the  Vaudeville  in  1893,  and  the 
Theatre  Francais  has  welcomed  to  its  re- 
pertory his  "  Tenailles. " 

*  *  *  * 

A  general  rehearsal  at  the  Theatre  Fran- 
cais is  interesting  because  of  two  classes  of 
people  you  see  there.  There  is,  first,  the 
class  that  everyone  in  Paris  knows,  at  least 
by  sight.  It  is  composed  mainly  of  actors 
and  actresses  and  dramatic  critics.  Per- 
haps nothing  can  be  said  of  these  celebri- 
ties when  observed  together,  except  that 
they  look  much  older  than  their  public 
photographs. 

Then  there  is  the  class  of  unknown,  non- 
descript persons  whom  no  one  ever  sees 


M.  Hervieu  131 

unless  at  general  rehearsals.  They  are 
curious  types  of  the  French  race.  They 
appear  to  have  come  from  odd  retreats  in 
the  country  or  forgotten  nooks  in  the 
suburbs.  They  are  provincial  cousins  of 
the  author,  obsolete  litterateurs  and  neg- 
lected actors  of  two  generations  ago,  who, 
in  their  antiquated  garbs  and  with  their 
rococo  faces,  seem  to  have  stepped  forth 
from  the  pages  of  old  French  fiction. 

At  the  rehearsal  of  "Les  Tenailles," 
you  would  have  been  struck  also  by  the 
contrast  between  the  white,  burning,  sunlit 
world  on  the  outside  of  the  windows,  and, 
on  the  inside,  an  artificial  world  of  wrinkles 
covered  up,  and  faded  complexions  flamboy- 
antly decorated.  The  contrast  was  as 
painful  as  suggestive.  The  everlasting 
battle  against  old  age !  Every  one  appeared 
no  longer  young.  Powder  and  paint  did 
their  utmost,  still  the  sun  cruelly  revealed 
the  fictitiousness  of  it  all. 

No  one  knows  at  what  hour  a  general 
rehearsal  at  the  Theatre  Frangais  will  begin. 
That  of  "  Les  Tenailles  "  was  vaguely  set 
for  half-past  one.  We  waited,  waited,  and 


132  M.  Hervieu 

the  three  curtain-rising  knocks  were  heard 
at  length  at  half-past  two.  But  so  rapidly 
was  the  piece  played  that  we  were  on  our 
way  home  at  half-past  four. 

The  subject  of  "  Les  Tenailles  "  is  the 
French  divorce  law.  In  this  play,  M.  Her- 
vieu wishes  to  picture  the  dreadful  existence 
of  an  honorable  man  and  wife  whose  char- 
acters do  not  accord,  whose  temperaments 
are  absolutely  dissimilar.  Yet  they  are 
forced  by  law  to  live  with  each  other:  the 
tenailles  of  the  statutes  forever  grip  them 
together.  Formerly,  in  France,  they  could 
have  been  divorced  under  a  "mutual  con- 
sent" act  which  was  this  in  effect:  A 
discontented  married  couple  might  lay  their 
case  before  a  Judge,  and  he  could  say, 
"  Return  in  a  year,  and  if  your  decision  is 
not  altered,  I  will  pronounce  your  divorce. " 
But  the  famous  author  of  the  present  French 
divorce  law,  M.  Naquet,  was  unable  to  per- 
suade the  Senate  to  accept  the  "mutual 
consent"  feature.  Hence  "  Les  Tenailles  " 
of  M.  Hervieu. 

One  of  his  characters  arouses  applause 


M.  Hervieu  133 

by  insisting  that  marriage  should  be  an 
involuntary  act.  The  three  great  events  of 
life  are  birth,  marriage,  death.  Nature,  he 
says,  brings  us  into  the  world  and  takes  us 
out  of  it  without  our  wish.  Is  it  not  logical 
to  believe  Nature  means  that,  likewise,  we 
should  be  married  involuntarily? 

The  audience  applauds  also  the  following 
passage:  The  old  brother-in-law  complains 
of  being  worn  out  with  having  to  rise  at 
five  each  morning  for  the  hunt.  He  must 
be  punctual  at  rendezvous,  he  must  to 
bed  early —  no  liberty,  no  repose,  no  pleas- 
ure even.  "  Can  you  not  take  a  day's 
vacation? "  asks  ftjs  wife.  To  which  he 
replies  impatiently:1  "  If  it  were  work,  yes; 
but  since  it  is  amusement,  impossible!" 
*  *  *  * 

We  do  not  usually  think  of  the  French 
novelist  as  having  a  huge  and  virile  sort  of 
genius  and  talent.  Notwithstanding  the 
traditions  of  Hugo,  Balzac,  Flaubert,  Zola, 
we  associate  him  with  delicacy,  artistic 
charm,  the  feminine.  When  there  springs 
full-armed  into  notice  a  young  Parisian 


134  M.  Hervieu 

romancer  who  is  powerful,  epic,  and  free 
from  the  taint  or  meshes  of  sexual  enamour- 
ment,  a  rare  thing  has  happened. 

Such  was  the  case  of  M.  Hervieu  on 
the  appearance  of  "  L'Armature. "  His 
"  Feints  par  eux-memes,"  it  is  true,  had 
attracted  notice.  It  contained  "L  'Arma- 
ture "  in  a  very  fair  state  of  development. 
It  has  the  same  theme  of  mondaine  and 
erring  misery,  the  same  tournure  of  charac- 
ters, with  Baron  Munstein  becoming  the 
future  Baron  Safre.  Yet,  while  "L'Arma- 
ture "  has  fortified,  magnified,  consecrated 
all  this,  it  displays  in  full  fore?  and  effect, 
for  the  first  time  in  the  history  of  French 
fiction,  a  puissance  of  make  that  is  metallic 
and  is  as  if  welded  by  a  preux.  It  was 
written  by  a  pen  held  in  a  hand  of  mail  — 
by  a  kind  of  mediaeval  knight  whose 
humanity  throbs  underneath  a  thick  coat  of 
.armor. 

The  redoubtable  author  finds  that  the 
basis  of  our  nineteenth  century  civilization 
is  not  armor,  as  in  the  Middle  Ages,  but 
another  metallic  substance — money.  Money 
is  the  "armature"  of  metal  which  holds 


M.  Hervieu  135 

together  and  preserves  the  form  of  the  less 
solid  duties,  principles  and  sentiments  which 
are  the  expression  of  society.  It  was  fitting, 
then  "that  '  L' Armature  "  should  have  been 
written  in  a  metallic  style. 

M.  Zola  has  "  bati  "  the  French  peasant, 
and  M.  Hervieu  has  reared  in  Pare  Mon- 
ceau  the  colossal  golden  god  of  money. 

M.  Hervieu  exemplifies  the  qualities 
which  M.  Brunetiere  has  glorified  in  pessim- 
ism. According  to  the  latter,  a  pessimistic 
soul  is  strong,  wholesome,  noble,  because 
it  disdains  this  world  and  realizes  the  piti- 
able misery  of  man.  Therefore,  it  should 
be  more  disposed  than  other  souls  to  aid, 
to  ameliorate.  M.  Hervieu  believes  with 
Schopenhauer  and  M.  Brunetiere  that  life  is 
bad,  that  man  is  bad,  that  the  tomb  is 
truly  a  liberator.  And,  as  already  indi- 
cated, there  is  likely  no  other  literary 
person  in  Paris  whose  face,  bearing,  atti- 
tude, voice,  give  such  evidence  of  a  pro- 
found and  innate  hopelessness.  Constantly 
mingling  in  society,  he  has  confessed  assidu- 
ously its  members  so  that,  like  a  priest,  he 
sees  only  good  in  death.  He  has  not  a 


136  M.  Hervieu 

whit  of  a  reformer's  enthusiasm.  Being- 
clean  of  the  intrigues,  iniquities,  culpable 
indulgences  which  characterize  society  as 
he  observes  and  presents  it,  he  is  openly 
hostile  to  vice.  He  recognizes  its  power 
and  longevity,  so  he  does  not  encourage. 
He  describes  ruthlessly  the  various  social 
evils,  and  stops  there.  This  is  the  nature 
of  his  moral  attitude,  aim  and  influence. 
For  the  transgressing  characters  of  his 
books,  he  has  the  tenderness  of  silence. 
He  neither  indoctrinates,  censures,  nor  vul- 
garizes. 

M.  Hervieu  once  told  me  that  he  did  not 
see  why  he  should  not  be  considered  a 
naturalistic  writer.  And  it  is  quite  true 
that  naturalistic  qualities  predominate  in 
his  later  volumes.  "Toutes  observations 
et  reflexions  dans  L'Armature  sont  person- 
elles  de  1'auteur. "  Perhaps  we  seize  most 
clearly  some  of  the  traits  that  classify  him 
by  noting  wherein  he  modestly  differs  from 
his  grandfather  in  literature  —  Balzac.  M. 
Hervieu  is  never  a  mystic,  a  romanesque 
being  in  the  clouds,  as  Balzac  was  at  times, 
and  we  have  remarked  that  he  does  not  put 


M.  Hervieu  137 

into  his  pages  people  who  live  in  the  flesh 
like  Pere  Goriot  or  Vautrin.  But,  on  the 
other  hand,  M.  Hervieu  has  in  his  novels 
the  dramatic  gift  which  Balzac  did  not 
possess,  and  shares  with  him  the  fatalistic 
instinct.  He  can  place  his  characters  on  a 
pedestal,  and  clarify,  intensify,  enlarge  his 
situations.  He  can  hurl  forth  sentences 
with  the  force  and  shock  of  a  cavalry  charge. 
M.  Hervieu  is  the  first  French  naturalis- 
tic novelist  to  work  and  be  at  home  in  the 
aristocratic  domain.  Balzac  was  very  ill-at- 
ease  there  and  Zola  has  avoided  it.  The 
tendency  of  the  naturalistic  writer  is  to 
haunt  the  middle  and  lower  classes,  and  the 
psychologists  court  the  upper  classes — the 
vie  mondaine.  M.  Hervieu,  while  he  has  the 
brutality  of  a  surgeon,  shuns,  like  the  psy- 
chologist, grossness,  bestiality,  as  these 
terms  are  commonly  understood,  for  they 
do  not  characterize  the  world  which  he 
lives  in  and  depicts.  Since  he  is  not  a 
sentimentalist,  he  does  not  blend  environ- 
ments into  the  souls  of  his  characters. 
The  surroundings  in  which  his  personages 
exist  are  fully  described,  yet  in  an  objective 


ij 8  M.  Hervieu 

way.  Their  moods,  unlike  those  of  Madame 
Bovary,  find  no  expression  in  the  inanimate 
world  about  them  —  in  landscape,  sea,  fur- 
niture. 

In  a  word  M.  Hervieu  is  in  no  sense 
poetic,  aesthetic,  idealistic. 

He  writes  with  a  distinctly  philosophic 
plan  and  purpose.  He  always  strikes  for 
the  motive  that  controls,  for  the  impulse 
behind.  He  is  a  generalizer  to  whom  a 
thing  is  not  so  valuable  for  itself  as  for  its 
relation  to  something  else  —  to  whom  a  per- 
sonage is  only  interesting  for  the  universal 
passion  which  he  visualizes.  Hence  he 
attacks  avarice,  not  the  avaricious;  he 
attacks,  not  censurable  lovers,  but  mondaine 
love  which,  according  to  M.  Anatole  France, 
has  acquired,  with  civilization,  the  regu- 
larity of  a  game  whose  rules  the  men  and 
women  of  the  world  observe. 

M.  Hervieu  has  a  rather  picturesque,  if 
cuirassed,  style.  Especial  notice  should  be 
called  to  his  verbs.  They  grip  and  clinch 
in  a  grim,  crushing  manner.  He  has  been 
set  upon  by  the  grammarians  for  his  diffuse 
rhetorical  crudities.  He  justifies  himself 


M.  Hervieu  139 

by  saying  that  he  is  searching  new  forms  of 
language  that  better  fit  the  life  and  needs 
of  to-day.  And  his  protagonists  M.  Bru- 
netiere  and  the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes^ 
defend  him  in  these  words:  "  Des  choses 
nouvelles  s'expriment  d'une  maniere  nou- 
velle  comme  elles;  et  on  ne  dit  rien  d'un 
peu  profond  dans  une  langue  banale. " 

The  first  productions  of  M.  Hervieu  had 
a  simpleness  of  maiiner,  and  were  pervaded 
by  a  genuine  personal  emotion.  He  has 
since  become,  because  of  his  grandiose, 
intellectual,  drastic,  metallic  talents  and 
style  —  the  Brunetiere  of  French  novelists. 


M.  Henri  de  Regnier 


M.    Henri    de    Regnier 

M.  de  Regnier  is  about  thirty-three  years 
of  age,  and  has  lived  a  silent  life  in  the 
quarter  of  the  Trocadero.  He  is  very  tall 
and  slender.  His  figure  and  face  are  melan- 
cholic and  fatigued.  His  heavily-arched 
eyes  look  far  behind  and  beyond  one.  He 
affeots  a  monocle  which  gives  him  a  dan- 
dified air  wholly  foreign  to  his  retiring  and 
reflective  nature.  He  discusses  contem- 
porary literature,  in  private  or  in  a  salon, 
with  a  sensible  modesty  and  a  terre-a-terre 
reserve.  He  regards  Baudelaire  as  a  per- 
fect symbolistic  poet,  and  finds  that  Hugo 
is  full  of  symbolism,  only  that  it  is  unde- 
veloped—  being  left,  as  a  rule,  until  the  last 
two  lines  of  a  poem. 

The  maturer  brochures  of  M.  de  Regnier 
form  the  one  important  and  durable  poetic 
product  thus  far  yielded  by  the  young  sym- 
bolistic school  in  France.  One  reason  why 
M3 


144          M.  Henri  de  Regnier 

this  school  has  met  with  slow  favor  among 
the  French  is  that  its  general  tone  is  pro- 
foundly mournful.  Since  its  main  aim  is  to 
illustrate  moral  and  fatal  truths,  its  most 
effective  symbols  are  those  which  have 
been  admonitorily,  ruefully,  associated 
with  man  throughout  the  whole  troubled 
course  of  history. 

The  temperament  of  M.  de  Regnier  is 
not  only  mournful  but  almost  funereal.  He 
is  prone  to  display  his  sentiments  "parmi 
les  pompes  mortes, "  and  to  trail  his  imagi- 
nation under  skies  of  ink.  The  cause  of 
this  is  not  a  Baudelairesque  malady,  nor  a 
broken-hearted  love  as  in  the  instance  of 
Sully  Prudhomme,  nor  a  robust  and  wrathy 
pessimism  as  in  the  case  of  Leconte  de 
Lisle,  with  his  resplendent  tropics  and 
gorgeous  pageantries.  M.  de  Regnier  is 
tsimply  a  quiet,  contented  optimist  whose 
melancholy  is  the  mark  and  expression  of 
his  personal  happiness.  He  is  an  aesthete 
whose  luxury  is  elegiac  and  sombre. 

His  sadness,  which  has,  he  says,  three 
friends :  Yesterday,  To-day,  To-morrow, 
takes  the  flight  of  time  as  its  all-embracing 


M.  Henri  de  Regnier          145- 

text.  This  text  is  a  variation  of  that  of 
"la  Legende  des  siecles  "  and  the  "Emaux 
et  Canines."  The  great  and  solemn  theme 
of  the  four-volumed  "Legende  des  siecles" 
is  the  pitiful  smallness  and  perishableness 
of  human  works,  whether  gigantic  pyramid 
or  monumental  forum.  And  it  is  well 
known  how  the  grave  and  microscopic 
Gautier  exhorted  men  to  defy  the  ages  by 
working  in  marble,  bronze,  enamel.  But 
M.  de  Regnier  folds  his  hands  as  if  idle 
and  helpless,  watches  the  hours  move  by, 
and  enjoys  the  regret  that  the  past  melts 
into  the  far  distance,  since  space  and  time 
heighten  the  effect  of  his  pleasurable  sor- 
row. He  is  in  no  sense  a  realist. 

The  unique  and  exquisite  satisfaction 
which  he  gives  his  reader  is  derived  from 
the  skill  with  which  his  consciousness  of 
fleeting  time  is  dissolved  into  music,  it  is 
true,  yet  also,  and  more  specifically,  into  a 
liquid  flow  —  a  fluidity  of  verse.  In  his 
pages,  the  static  art  of  Gautier,  of  Leconte 
de  Lisle,  of  even  Hugo,  is  found  flowing 
along  in  a  kind  of  poetic  solution  with  little 
hesitation  of  period  and  with  little  friction 


146          M.  Henri  de  Regnier 

of  rhyme.  Clearly  indisputable  are  the 
legitimate  value  and  charm  of  his  conserv- 
ative "vers  libre"  whenever  its  liberty  of 
assonance,  of  alliteration,  of  lost  rhyme, 
suggests  with  flexible  felicity  the  voluntary 
marriage  of  metrical  form  to  sentiment. 
Illustrative  of  all  this,  is  his  little  poem 

LES   OMBRES   DES   HEURES. 

Viens!   la  douceur  de  vivre  eclot  dans  nos  pensees 

Et  les  Ombres  avec  les  Heures  sont  passees, 

Une  a  une,  portant  a  leurs  mains,  une  a  une, 

L'argent  clair  de  la  coupe  et  1'argile  de  1'urne 

Avec  des  palmes  d'or  et  des  grappes  de  roses, 

Et  celle-ci  menant  devant  elle,  ivre  et  fauve, 

Par  les  comes,  un  grand  bouc  noir  barbu  de  roux 

Qui  mord  un  bouquet  vert  de  cigue  et  de  houx, 

Et  celle-la  passant  le  long  de  la  colline 

Et  pres  du  lac,  parmi  le  cortege  des  cygnes, 

Et  celle  qui  riait  et  celle  qui  pleurait, 

Et  celle  qui  semblait  sortir  de  la  foret, 

Et  1'autre  qui  semblait  s'en  aller  vers  la  mer; 

Et  toutes,  tour  a  tour,  sur  1'Orient  plus  clair, 

Avec  la  coupe,  avec  le  bouc  et  avec  1'urne 

Et  les  palmes  et  les  roses  et  une  £  une 

Disparaissaient,  laissant,  lentes  dans  nos  pensees, 

Le  sourire  en  passant  de  leurs  bouches  lassees. 

Here,   where  the    symbolistic  virgins  of 
Puvis  de  Chavannes  glide  through  aerified 


M.  Henri  de  Regnier          147 

expanses,  and  where  the  scene  speeds  de- 
liciously  on  and  on  because  the  poet  is  not 
checked  by  full  punctuations  nor  restrained 
by  the  necessity  of  polishing  the  axles  of 
rigid  rhymes,  there  is,  too,  a  graceful  ex- 
ample of  his  synthetic  gift,  for  he  renum- 
bers and  regroups,  at  the  close,  his  various 
trailing  figures  and  emblems. 

Since  the  synthetical  is  an  essential  fea- 
ture of  the  symbolistic  art,  the  ideas  treated 
by  a  symbolistic  poet  tend  to  the  utmost 
simplicity  and  generality:  he  would  banish 
the  particularities  and  accidents  of  epoch, 
milieu,  and  events.  This  was  one  fact 
which  converted  M.  Brunetiere  to  a  lenient 
regard  for  the  serious  promises  of  this 
young,  anti-naturalistic  school,  for  it  is  the 
"  general  "  in  literature  which  attracts  his 
attention  and  admiration.  His  rather  vague 
dictum  that  symbolism  has  reintegrated 
"  1'idee  dans  la  poesie  "  should  not  be  in- 
terpreted, then,  as  meaning  that  the  vital 
interest  of  the  symbolistic  versemaker  de- 
pends on  ideas. 

M.  de  Regnier,  in  composing  a  poem, 
does  three  things.  He  takes,  for  instance, 


148          M.  Henri  de  Regnier 

his  favorite  theme  of  the  flight  of  time, 
and  fixes  to  it  an  image  like  that  of  fleeting 
water.  These  two  parts  of  the  task  are 
always  simple,  for  he  selects  with  indiffer- 
ence both  the  idea  and  the  image.  To 
work  them  into  an  allegory,  is  his  real  and 
difficult  undertaking  —  the  true  symbolistic 
feat. 

As  with  Gautier  and  Leconte  de  Lisle,  it 
is  still  the  exterior  guise,  the  envelope,  the 
principle  of  art  for  art's  sake,  that  concern 
him,  but  his  aestheticism,  unlike  theirs,  is 
liquid  and  weds  the  pulsating  flow  of  the 
soulful  and  the  human.  The  self-imposed 
duty  of  M.  de  Regnier  is  to  give  an  enig- 
matic appearance  to  this  exterior  guise, 
and  to  make  it  thereby  significantly  mysteri- 
ous and  obscure ;  he  must  mask  his  thought, 
his  colors,  his  effects,  and  never  name 
them.  This  he  did  in  an  unrelenting  man- 
ner in  "  Poemes  anciens  et  romanesques. " 
His  incomprehensibility  —  the  inevitable 
tendency  of  any  emblematic  effort  to  poet- 
ize the  indefinite  and  indefinable  —  is  less 
latent  in  his  riper  books,  "  Tel  qu'en 
songe,"  "Arethuse. "  . 


M.  Henri  de  Regnier          149 

Naturally,  he  traces  his  poetic  lineage  to 
Mallarme  and  Baudelaire,  and  through  Bau- 
delaire to  Hugo.  Nevertheless,  in  his  first 
brochures,  there  is  to  be  remarked  the  direct 
and  undisguised  authority  of  Leconte  de 
Lisle  —  a  taste  for  the  classic  and  a  sense 
of  stationary,  magisterial  size.  In  the  evo- 
lution of  M.  de  Regnier  into  symbolism, 
his  Greek  "sites"  and  Renaissance  parks 
have  transformed  into  more  imaginative, 
allegorical,  magic  vistas,  and  his  unicorns, 
amphorae,  corteges,  are  no  longer  meaning- 
less decorations,  but  reflect  emblematically 
a  sentient  interior  and  ulterior  realm. 

It  is  due  to  the  influence  of  Leconte  de 
Lisle  that  M.  de  Regnier  entered  into  the 
Greek  pantheistic  domain  rather  than  into 
that  of  the  truly  romantic  and  Rosicrucian. 
As  a  result  of  the  blending  of  these  two 
domains  —  of  avoiding  the  plastic  material- 
ism which  is  characteristic  of  the  one,  and 
of  sacrificing  the  Christian  element  which 
is  characteristic  of  the  other  —  his  poetry 
assumes  a  certain  preraphaelite,  De  Chav- 
annesque  aspect  and  interest. 

M.  de  Regnier  has  been  notably  inspired 


150          M.  Henri  de  Regnier 

by  the  dramas  of  Wagner.  He  considers 
Wagner  an  important  poet  whose  new  note 
was  the  humanization  of  mythology.  The 
ability  and  decided  talents  of  M.  de  Reg- 
nier have  been  admitted  all  along,  even  by 
rigorous  Parnassians  like  his  father-in- 
law,  M.  de  Heredia,  and  by  Sully  Prud- 
homme,  who  both  have  deplored,  of  course, 
his  obscurantism  and  his  "  vers  libre. " 
One  reason  why  the  young  poet  has  suc- 
ceeded in  bringing  his  polymorphous  verse 
through  to  a  triumph,  is  that  he  has  been 
wise  enough  not  to  break  with  every  tradi- 
tion, but  to  respect  his  classic,  and  time- 
consecrated,  literary  ancestry, 


M.  Marcel  Prevost 


M.   Marcel  Prevost 

The  famous  discoverer  of  the  Demi-Vir- 
gins of  Paris! 

A  young  novelist  of  thirty-three!  A  man 
of  the  world !  M.  Paul  Bourget  is  his  ideal. 
Woman  and  love  are  his  themes. 

His  pages  are  impregnated  with  the  aroma 
of  woman,  with  the  perfume  of  amber  and 
fern.  The  eternal  feminine  forever  pursues 
him.  His  fiction  is  of  the  romanesque 
type.  If  you  ask  him  to  name  a  romanesque 
novel,  he  will  name  the  "  Lys  dans  la 
Vallee  "  of  Balzac.  M.  Bourget  has  said 
that  M.  Prevost  began,  in  this  kind  of  lit- 
erature, where  George  Sand  left  off. 

What  a  froufrou  of  curiosity  the  title  of 
his  novel  the  "Demi-Virgins"  trailed 
across  the  public  conscience  in  Paris! 
Hermaphrodites  and  hybrids  are  always 
disquieting. 

What  is  a   Demi-Virgin?     According  to 


154  M.  Marcel  Prevost 

M.  Prevost,  she  is,  as  a  class,  much  more 
frequent  in  other  countries  than  in  France, 
for  "flirting"  is  an  Anglo-Saxon  device; 
and  you  may  garland  the  word  with  all  the 
poetry  and  innocence  you  please,  yet  the 
whole  truth  is  known  about  it.  M.  Prevost 
says:  "Abandon  the  modern  notion  of 
giving  girls  a  liberal  —  a  universal  —  educa- 
tion. Teach  them  not  life  as  it  is,  but 
duty,  honor,  resignation.  Hurry  them  back 
into  convents  to  be  piously  instructed  there, 
or  the  institution  of  marriage  will  perish." 

The  Demi-Virgin  is,  then,  a  girl  who 
amuses  herself  in  the  society  of  men.  She 
leads  an  elegant  life ;  she  is  luxuriously 
entertained.  She  competes  with  young 
women  (i.  e.  her  seniors)  and  disputes  their 
title  to  their  admirers  with  the  insolent 
advantage  of  her  fresh  youth.  She  exercises 
over  the  daughters  of  the  respectable 
middle  class  the  same  sort  of  influence  that 
the  club  man  exercises  over  the  college 
student. 

The  Demi-Virgins  of  M.  Prevost  flute 
the  verbiage  of  lorettes,  envy  the  "  ros- 


M.  Marcel  Prevost  155 

series"  of  the  demi  monde,  and  live  in  a 
realm  of  decollete  silhouettes,  petits  bleus, 
cigarettes.  Their  "souls  are  cloths  that 
one  re-dyes  with  the  color  of  his  own." 

The  author  knows  so  well  all  the  haunts 
of  this  type  of  young  woman.  He  can 
induct  you  into  her  alcoves,  green  rooms, 
trianons,  temples  of  love.  It  is  a  vague 
and  feverish  realm  whose  confines  are 
bathed  by  cytherean  waves,  and  where  there 
are  "  bals  de  rapins, "  "  bals  fin  de  siecle, " 
and  the  dancing  gaieties  of  the  peteneras, 
It  is  a  domain  where  the  law  of  life  is 
embraced  in  the  question,  What  would 
people  say?  Its  motto  does  not  denote 
principles,  duties,  but  pretences,  conven- 
tionalities. 

It  is  the  world  that  Doucet  garbs  in  grace- 
ful and  piquant  fancies.  It  is  the  world 
that  M.  Catulle  Mendes  versifies,  and  that 
the  Gil  Bias  beguiles.  It  is  the  world  that 
Massenet  fondles  with  his  langourous  cantil- 
tnes  and  his  titillating  arabesques  of  music. 
It  is  the  world  that  fringes  on  the  foyer  de  la 
danse  at  the  opera,  where  thick-lipped 


156  M.  Marcel  Prevost 

money  changers  leer  polygamously  from 
their  monocled  facades  of  insolence  and 
irony. 

M.  Prevost  has  been  correctly  called  an 
erratic  Christian.  He  feels  that  he  is  in 
communication  with  spirits  of  the  other  and 
higher  life.  He  is  a  spiritualist,  a  mystic, 
an  idealist.  Believing  that  the  world  is 
growing  better,  he  prefers  that  it  adhere  to 
the  good  models  and  customs  of  the  past 
rather  than  follow  new  patterns  of  manners 
and  morals. 

He  is  an  immense  believer  in  England. 
Its  roast  beef  and  rosebud  type  of  virgin 
beauty  are  evidences  to  his  mind  that  the 
Anglo-Saxon  race  will  continue  to  thrive, 
and  is  destined  to  be  present  at  the  distant 
apotheosis  of  humanity. 

At  his  Sunday  forenoons  in  the  Avenue 
Percier,  one  finds  M.  Prevost  very  friendly 
and  cosmopolitan.  He  is  a  kind  of  enthu- 
siastic young  college  man  who  is  fond  of 
discussing  the  literary  and  social  questions 
of  the  day  as  if  he  and  his  guests  were 
directly  responsible  for  the  progress  of  civ- 
ilization. 


Madame    Bernhardt 


Madame    Bernhardt 

In  Paris,  who  has  not  remarked  that 
hotel  with  red  window  sashes  in  the  Boule- 
vard Pereire,  and  where  a  grotesquely- 
garbed  negro  bobs  in  and  out  ?  If  we  ring, 
the  portal  opens  promptly.  We  enter  — 
no  one.  We  wander  on,  and  up,  four  or  five 
steps,  and  ring  again.  No  response — no 
noise  —  not  a  sign  of  life.  After  a  second 
sounding  of  the  bell,  perhaps  a  young 
Frenchman  in  bicycle  costume  will  draw 
back  the  door,  and  invite  us  in. 

If  it  is  about  one  o'  clock  in  the  after- 
noon, we  may  just  happen  to  behold 
Madame  Bernhardt  descending  the  stately, 
rectangular  staircase  from  the  lofty,  light- 
diffused  heights  above.  We  watch  her  yel- 
low sleeve  langourously  slipping  along  the 
balustrade,  as  its  owner  sighs  and  wilts  and 
droops  down  the  steps.  She  reaches  the 
floor  and,  levelling  her  hand  above  her  eyes 


160  Madame  Bernhardt 

as  she  tries  to  distinguish  us  against  the 
sunny  window  behind  us,  she  ripples  forth 
in  a  key  of  lyric  and  pearl  :  "  Bonjour, 
monsieur — I  see  nothing  at  all  —  nothing 
at  all " 

She  approaches  closely,  recognizes  us, 
and  her  murmuring  lips  change  to  an  im- 
ploring key  :  "  Soyez  gentil —  wait  till  I 
have  breakfasted  —  I'm  dying  of  hunger 
—  « ' 'est-ce-pas  ?  —  I'm  famished."  And 
the  blond,  supplicating  vision  wafts  through 
the  door  into  her  dining-hall. 

We  go  into  her  atelier.  It  is  her  recep- 
tion room.  First,  we  enter  a  dark  apart- 
ment hung  with  pictures.  Then  we  descend 
three  steps  into  her  long,  beautiful  studio, 
which  is  bathed  in  a  soft,  aureate  light. 
Here,  at  our  leisure,  we  may  explore  and 
enjoy  an  aesthetic  haunt  of  our  hostess. 

The  walls  have  a  faded  tomato  color. 
They  are  enriched  by  three  conspicuous 
canvases  by  Clairin.  The  largest  one  is 
above  the  grate  at  the  end  of  the  room.  It 
is  her  well-known  portrait  of  the  year  1876. 
In  it,  she  is  a  frail,  wispy  Parisienne  half- 
reclining  on  a  divan.  Clairin's  second  por- 


Madame  Bernhardt  161 

trait  here  was  painted  in  1894,  and  repre- 
sents her  as  some  Theodora  of  a  Benjamin 
Constant — some  Byzantine  empress  of 
gold,  tiger-skins  and  dagger-pointed  fren- 
zies. 

Other  pictures  of  her.  A  fine  pastel. 
And  a  little  canvas  —  bearing  the  legend: 
"To  the  Blond  Dream  —  by  Louis  Bes- 
nard" — shows  the  profile  of  her  face  turned 
up  and  distinctly  detaching  from  a  scheme 
of  purple.  Opposite,  Spindler  has  painted 
her  in  the  style  of  Lefebvre's  Laurreta  —  a 
mystic  outline  of  countenance  ;  a  virginal 
coil  of  hair  falling  between  erect  shoulders; 
a  myrtle  branch  in  her  hand;  a  background 
of  gilt. 

Three  or  four  busts  in  marble  and  bronze 
repose  on  pedestals  here  and  there.  One 
of  the  busts  is  signed  —  "  Sarah  Bernhardt, 
Sculptor."  This  art  collection  is  com- 
pleted by  a  long,  ivory-sculptured  casket, 
an  inlaid  chest,  and  several  large  reliqua- 
ries full  of  tiny  Hindoo  deities,  gods  of  the 
Pueblo  Indians,  minuscule  Hottentots, 
statuettes  of  Jeanne  d'  Arc,  of  Henry  the 
Fourth  and  of  Napoleon,  bronze  turtles, 


162  Madame  Bernhardt 

views  of  Niagara  Falls  and  Australian 
cities.  On  a  pile  of  these  photographs,  a 
pair  of  white  gloves,  hastily  thrown  off, 
lingers,  waiting  to  be  discovered  by  a  maid 
or  valet.  There  is  a  noticeable  absence  of 
books. 

The  two  spacious  windows  are  fantasti- 
cally stained.  Great  tiger-skins  and  Span- 
ish rugs  stretch  across  the  floor.  The 
entry-way  is  flanked  by  two  calla  lilies,  by 
two  immense  blue  porcelain  vases,  and  by 
\.\JQ  jardinieres — one  offering  azaleas  to  the 
visitor  and  the  other  displaying  big,  fading, 
red  roses. 

A  huge  cage  fits  into,  and  forms  a  part 
of,  the  wall  next  the  court.  Through 
its  glass  side  where  bead-strung  cords 
hang  down  like  a  curtain,  we  may  watch  a 
large  monkey  indulging  in  gymnastic  exer- 
cises with  the  vertical  bars  of  his  prison. 
His  neighbor  is  a  green  parrot.  And  above, 
a  colony  of  brilliantly-hued  birds  flutter 
about  and  twitter.  You  hear  an  occasional 
cry  of  a  wild  animal,  and  there  is  sug- 
gested the  odor  of  a  menagerie  and  the 
savors  of  fresh,  ferine  flesh. 


Madame  Bernhardt  163 

The  perspective  of  the  room  is  relieved 
by  a  palm  tree.  Behind  it,  just  in  front  of 
and  around  the  fireplace,  is  a  more  private 
retreat.  Here  a  grand  piano  is  half  hidden 
away  under  the  palm.  White,  soft  rugs 
languish  under  our  feet,  and  on  one  side 
a  beautiful  white  silk  couch  with  silken  pil- 
lows tempts  one  to  indolence.  On  the 
opposite  side  of  the  grate  there  is  an  enor- 
mous canopy  bristling  above  with  a  display 
of  mediaeval  weapons  and  heraldic  emblems. 
An  immense  divan  here  disappears  below 
a  tumultuous  array  of  cushions,  satin  pil- 
lows, eider-down  bolsters.  Underneath 
them  a  gigantic  tiger  skin  steals  away 
among  the  white  rugs  on  the  floor. 

In  this  canopy  the  mistress  of  the  house 
will  recline  presently  when  she  comes  in 
from  breakfast,  and  converse,  act,  toss  her 
arms  and  charm  us  beyond  description  in 
her  role,  not  of  Phedre  or  Marguerite 
Gautier  or  Fedora,  but  of  Sarah  Bernhardt 
—  the  most  consummate  role  of  all.  Inter- 
viewers say  that  no  one  in  Paris,  not  even 
Sardou,  can  handle  them  as  can  Madame 
Bernhardt.  She  appears  to  make  them 


164  Madame  Bernhardt 

proudly  feel  that  she  is  telling  them  every- 
thing. It  is  not  until  they  prepare  their 
"copy"  that  they  discover  how  she  has 
slipped  around  the  interesting  subjects  and 
piquant  questions,  and  imparted  nothing. 

In  her  atelier,  then,  all  is  exotic.  Hot 
desert  skies  and  burning  yellow  seas  are 
reflected  here.  She  loves  the  beasts  of 
torrid  forests,  and  the  negro  races.  She 
adores  the  barbaric  —  the  pathognomic  — 
moods  and  forms  of  life  and  the  violent 
aspects  of  nature,  rather  than  the  placid 
types  of  classic  beauty  and  conventional 
scenery. 

Yet,  with  all  her  tempestuous  career  of 
excitement  and  sensation,  she  does  not  wear 
out  or  go  to  pieces  like  her  romantic  pre- 
decessors—  Madame  Dorval  and  the  rest. 
It  is  because  she  is  evaporative.  Every- 
thing, with  her,  aerates  into  spumescence. 
No  dregs  are  left  behind  to  do  harm.  She 
cares  precious  little  whether  the  Comic  is 
the  expression  of  vice  or  whether  the 
Tragic  is  the  expression  of  virtue.  Tragedy 
and  drama  are  simply  her  pastime  for  earn- 
ing money  —  elle  s'en  amuse. 


Madame  Bernhardt  165 

In  a  word,  she  is  romanesque,  not 
romantic.  And  of  course  she  has  a  secret 
horror  of  realism  on  the  stage.  She  classi- 
fies and  simplifies  all  that  she  touches.  She 
has  the  art,  too,  of  keeping  young.  She 
brings  out  dramas  of  the  newest  schools  in 
Paris.  She  creates  roles  of  the  youngest 
playwrights.  She  remains  the  courted  idol 
of  the  Sorbonne  students. 

Yet,  Madame  Bernhardt  is  not  like  the 
poet  Regnier  of  old,  who  is  said  to  have 
written  in  his  own  epitaph  :  "I  am  aston- 
ished that  Death  should  dare  to  think  of 
me,  since  I  have  never  thought  of  him. " 
For,  the  cult  of  death  is  always  a  fad  with 
her.  She  has  had  her  monument  built  at 
Pere  Lachaise.  Regularly  every  month 
she  makes  a  pilgrimage  to  it  in  a  rose- 
laden  carriage,  and  with  a  wan  and  Undine 
coquettisliness  strews  expensive  flowers 
on  the  spot  where  she  will  pose  and  repose 
for  the  last  time. 


M.  Mounet-Sully 


M.    Mounet-Sully 

The  saddest  of  all  the  sixty  tragedians, 
serio-comiques,  comedians,  ingenues  and 
jeunes  veuves  of  the  Theatre  Francais.  A 
fatalistic  woe  overcasts  his  face.  He  exists, 
acts,  triumphs,  yet  lives  not.  Despair  has 
settled  in  his  eyes  and  left  him  only  a  frag- 
ment of  vision.  He  plays  the  grief  of 
Sophocles,  Shakespeare,  Racine,  Hugo,  but 
it  is  in  reality  his  own  grief,  private,  poign- 
ant, helpless. 

Whence,  the  air  of  desolate  pitiableness 
which  always  isolates  him  in  any  group  of 
fellow-actors.  He  is  a  kind  of  haggard 
somnambulist  whose  intercourse  with  the 
world  in  general  is  unstrung  in  the  key  of 
elegy. 

He  is  chez  lui  up  five  flights,  almost  in  the 

roof,  at  No.  i  Rue  Gay-Lussac,  where  the 

immense  cheer  of  the  sun  and  of  the  open 

sky  whitens  out  a  little  of  the  darkness 

169 


1 70  M.  Mou net-Sully 

within  him.  The  apartment  is  railed  in  by 
a  cosy  iron  balcony  which  is  decked,  on 
summer  days,  with  a  scarlet  garland  of 
geraniums.  The  view  is  right  out  upon 
and  across  the  Luxembourg  gardens,  where 
the  Latin  Quarter  refreshes  its  gaiety  on 
warm  afternoons  and  the  music  of  a  senti- 
mental military  band  trails  upward  through 
the  harps  of  the  trees. 

In  the  salon  of  M.  Mounet-Sully,  bronze 
Venuses  writhe  in  their  beauty  underneath 
the  mute  and  stolid  gaze  of  an  Ethiopian 
caryatid  or  slave.  The  walls  are  fatigued 
with  costly  ornaments,  portraits,  gilded 
crowns  of  homage. 

By  contrast,  his  dressing  room  at  the 
Comedie  Francaise  is  an  eccentric  den. 
Fancy  a  collection  of  swords,  gauntlets, 
green  laurel  wreaths  with  ribbons  painted 
"A  Mounet-Sully,"  books,  manuscripts  and 
what-not,  all  jumbled  together  in  hopeless 
disorder  and  with  the  dust  of  a  decade  upon 
them!  He  will  not  allow  the  spot  to  be 
touched.  The  various  events  and  varying 
epochs  of  his  career,  from  year  to  year, 
have  thus  left  their  mark  of  the  moment 


M.  Mounet-Sully  171 

upon  the  place.  The  archivist  of  the  thea- 
tre can  read  the  loge  like  a  histrionic  sketch 
or  chapter. 

However,  this  dust  and  disorder  are 
shaken  up  as  often  as  M.  Mounet-Sully 
plays,  for,  he  is  addicted,  on  such  occasions, 
to  habits  of  fury,  vociferations  of  rage. 
His  coiffeurs  are  well  aware  that  his  finest 
exhibitions  of  anger  are  produced,  not  on 
the  stage,  but  in  private  and  for  their  per- 
sonal benefit.  It  is  merely  a  dispensing  of 
the  bile  accumulated  in  quarreling  with  the 
characters  who  menacingly  tread  the  pages 
of  his  tragic  authors. 

These  domestic  scenes  always  end  with 
his  hand  held  out  frankly  and  amicably 
and  an  "  Au  revoir,  me s amis,"  in  token  that 
his  white  and  splendid  ire  has  disappeared 
once  more  into  that  despondent  darkness 
out  of  which  it  sprang. 

This  is  not  saying  that  he  is  incapable 
of  amusing  incidents.  Perhaps  you  will 
recall  this  one.  Scene  —  a  certain  rehearsal 
of  "  le  Roi  s'amuse."  The  music  had  been 
written  by  Delibes,  the  composer  of  the 
delicious  ballet  "  Coppelia. "  M.  Mounet- 


1 72  M.  Mou net-Sully 

Sully  was  filling  the  role  of  Francis  L,  and 
sang  so  wretchedly  that  Delibes  cried  out: 

"  It  's  impossible  to  go  on  with  such  a 
false  voice." 

"But,  Monsieur,"  interrogated  the  trag- 
edian, "how  do  you  know  that  Francis  I. 
did  not  sing  with  a  false  voice  ?  " 

M.  Mounet-Sully  made  his  debut  at  the 
Theatre  Franfais  in  1872.  For  a  long  time 
he  was  conspicuous  because  everybody 
found  fault  with  him.  He  was  too  exag- 
gerated and  yet  too  correct;  he  was  too 
artificial  and  yet  too  realistic;  and  so  on. 
People  smiled  at  the  idea  of  his  proposing 
to  fondle  live  serpents  while  playing  "An- 
dromaque." 

Latterly  he  has  remained  conspicuous  in 
France  because  of  no  rival.  The  querulous 
public  can  keep  on  complaining  that  he 
rants  and  depends  on  mannerisms  for  his 
effects.  They  can  keep  on  insisting  that 
his  physique  is  too  fragile  for  the  bowels  of 
a  profound  distress,  and  that  his  voice  is 
too  frail  to  exhaust  the  lungs  of  a  powerful 
rage.  They  can  keep  on  grumbling  be- 
cause he  does  not  tower  down  upon,  and 


M.  Mounet-Sully  173 

terrorize,  the  "first  rows,"  and  does  not 
throw  a  pall  of  reprobation  upon  the  con- 
science of  the  audience,  and  does  not  leave 
a  deep,  fatalistic  echo  resounding  in  the 
ear. 

What  of  all  that?  Without  him,  France 
would  have  to-day  no  one  to  offer  as  a 
match  for  Irving,  Salvini,  Booth. 

But  if  there  is  much  to  criticise  in  M. 
Mounet-Sully,  there  is  as  much  and  more 
to  admire.  We  may  note  here  two  traits 
and  explanations  of  his  stage  play  and 
presence. 

First,  he  is  eminently  aesthetic.  The 
sestheticism  of  Racine  finds  in  him  the 
expression  of  its  delicacy  of  mold,  of  its 
feminine  charm,  of  its  prevailing  sense  of 
the  artistic.  All  this  phase  of  French  trag- 
edy M.  Mounet-Sully  has  been  the  first  to 
accentuate  and  exalt  as  a  reflection  of  the 
French  cult  of  refinement  and  taste. 

Then,  as  for  the  Greek  play,  he  is  an 
Athenian,  not  a  Parisian.  It  is  true  that 
he  was  born  in  France  of  French  parents, 
but  he  is  a  genuine  Greek  in  spirit  and 
attitude.  He  perks  his  head,  strides 


174  M.  Mounet-Sully 

briskly,  explodes  quickly  into  wrath,  like 
Homer's  irascible  and  boyish  heroes  who 
wore  their  passions  on  the  arm.  His  poses, 
garbs,  gestures  are  those  of  young  Hellenic 
gods  —  sculpturesque,  graceful  and  superb 
in  a  light  and  corky  way.  It  is  all  exterior, 
decorative.  There  are  in  him  none  of  those 
soulful  depths,  those  vague  profundities, 
which  characterize  the  north.  And  this  is 
as  it  should  be. 

M.     Mounet-Sully    is    the    last    of    the 
ancient  Greeks! 


M.  Coquelin  Cadet 


M.  Coquelin  Cadet 

The  funniest  fellow  in  Paris!  Who? 
Why,  Cadet  —  M.  Coquelin  Cadet  —  younger 
brother  of  the  great  and  world-known 
Coquelin!  M.  Coquelin  Cadet  is  only 
heard  of  in  France,  but  in  Paris  even  the 
babies  laugh  when  his  name  is  mentioned. 
A  farcical  fellow  —  very —  broadly  farcical 
—  almost  fit  for  a  clownship. 

And  what  title  and  right,  then,  has  he  to 
be  a  societaire  of  the  classic  Theatre  Fran- 
cais?  The  best  of  titles  and  rights:  by 
virtue  of  the  Moliere  farce  or  "comedy- 
ballet" —  than  which  no  farce  is  more 
broad,  more  lively,  more  unbuttoned. 

Imagine  the  decorous  Come'die  Francaise 
turned  into  a  circus  by  the  spectacle  of  M. 
Coquelin  Cadet  as  Moliere's  famous  sim- 
pleton Monsieur  de  Pourceaugnac,  being 
chased  through  the  whole  theatre — par- 
quet, dress  circle,  balcony  —  by  a  dozen 
177 


178  M.  Coquelin  Cadet 

doctors  armed  with  colossal  syringes  and 
bent  on  performing  that  certain  medical 
operation  so  affected  by  physicians  in  Mo- 
liere's  day  and  so  persistently  ridiculed  by 
him!  On  these  occasions  M.  Coquelin 
comes  up  through  the  prompter's  hole, 
seizes  a  plank  and  whacks  the  head  of  the 
first  doctor  whose  bald  and  pursuing  pate  is 
thrust  up  through  the  orifice  —  and  this 
disciple  of  Hippocrates  is  "  laid  out  "  on  the 
boards.  Finally,  M.  Coquelin  Pourceaug- 
nac  appears  in  a  woman's  garb  among  the 
spectators  in  the  second  gallery,  and  is  thus 
able  to  bid  a  triumphant  adieu  to  his  perse- 
cutors on  the  stage,  and  shake  off  the  dust 
of  the  maudite  ville  of  Paris  —  ce  pays  des 
femmes  et  des  lavements. 

M.  Coquelin  Cadet  is  not  tall,  but  is  well 
built  and  inclined  to  stoutness.  A  promi- 
nent nose  and  mouth  and  very  mobile  feat- 
ures give  a  deobstruent  character  to  this 
physiognomy  which  the  painter  Friant  has  so 
well  portrayed  —  that  broad  exuberance  of 
visage  with  its  message  of  prosperous  irre- 
sponsibility and  sedative  hilarity.  His 
little  forehead  slopes  almost  straight  back 


M.  Coquelin  Cadet 

from  the  eyes  so  that  he  can  assume  the 
look  of  a  perfect  idiot.  Not  quite  perfect, 
though,  for  his  two  little  brown  eyes  ever 
persist  in  snapping  with  intelligence  and 
reacting  against  the  natural  idiocy  of  the 
rest  of  his  face. 

And  just  here  it  is  worthy  of  remark  that 
his  gestures  are  never  exaggerated.  Quite 
the  contrary.  They  surprise  one  by  their 
extreme  moderateness.  His  hands  rarely 
fling  out  wide  of  the  body.  They  rarely 
rise  higher  than  his  nose,  in  accordance 
with  the  classic  Ciceronian  tradition,  and 
in  accordance  with  the  present  fashions  at 
the  Conservatoire  in  its  reaction  against  the 
ultra  arm-flinging,  hair-tossing  modes  pre- 
valent in  the  days  of  Frederic  Lemaitre 
and  the  romantic  drama. 

The  jeu  of  M.  Coquelin  Cadet  is,  there- 
fore, not  only  phlegmatic  but  severely  cor- 
rect. He  will  recite  one  of  his  monologues 
and  scarcely  move  his  hands  from  a  pendant 
position.  And  yet  one  of  the  most  popular 
diversions  of  Parisian  society  is  the  solilo- 
quizing of  this  — 

Souple  et  fringant  valet  appiaudi  d'un  salon. 


180  M.  Coquelin  Cadet 

M.  Coquelin  Cadet  is  usually  to  be  seen 
around  the  Theatre  Francais.  If  you 
happen  to  be  playing  chess  about  dinner 
time  right  across  the  street  in  the  Cafe  de 
la  Regence,  the  waiter  is  apt  to  ask  you  to 
be  kind  enough  to  pass  to  another  table 
because  M.  Coquelin  is  coming  to  dine. 
And  the  next  moment  he  slips  in  quietly, 
unobtrusively,  with  some  fellow-actor,  and 
hastily  eats  while  busily  conversing  in  a 
hushed  manner. 

For  he  is  always  in  a  hurry  —  always  a 
little  behind  time.  His  coiffeur  complains 
that  he  never  has  a  proper  chance  to  exhibit 
his  art  on  M.  Cadet.  "  Mon  Dieu  —  I'm 
late  —  don't  stop  for  extras;  anything  will 
do  and  anyhow,"  is  his  customary  refrain. 
His  dressing-room  is,  despite  all  his  belated 
fussing  and  nervous  haste,  a  well  ordered, 
attractive  nook  —  quite  in  contrast  to  the 
adjoining  one  of  Mounet-Sully. 

The  special  fad  of  M.  Coquelin  Cadet  is 
pictures.  ,  "Yes,  I  have  a  passion  for  paint- 
ings—  am  a  little  like  my  brother  for  that," 
he  will  say  to  guests  as  he  hurries  through  his 
elegant  apartments  in  the  Avenue  du  Bel 


M.  Coquelin  Cadet  181 

Respire,  and  points  out  the  canvases  that 
are  particularly  precious  to  him.  His  two 
favorite  living  painters  are,  perhaps,  Dag- 
nan-Bouveret  and  Cazin  —  their  toiles  freely 
cover  his  walls. 

Zorn  and  Roll,  as  well  as  Friant,  have 
painted  his  portrait,  and  he  has  several 
amateur  paintings  by  his  intimate  friend 
M.  Waldeck-Rousseau,  the  eminent  Paris- 
ian advocate.  One  notes  in  his  drawing- 
room  pictures  by  Sargent  and  Muenier, 
pastels  by  Madeleine  Lemaire,  and  impres- 
sionistic paintings. 

"Yes,  I'm  an  impressionist,  too  —  a 
little  of  everything — eclectic,"  M.  Co'que- 
lin  will  remark  in  his  hurried,  noiseless 
voice  as  if  he  were  out  of  breath  from  run- 
ning. "And  there's  Sarah's  bust  of  me  — 
yes,  in  marble  —  well  done,  n' 'est-ce-pas? 
—  ttonnante,  cette  femme — fait  tout!  I 
came  from  Boulogne-sur-Mer,  you  know, 
that's  why  there  are  so  many  pictures  here 
of  Boulogne.  Tcnez!  here  's  a  photograph 
of  myself — on  a  bicycle  —  yes,  I 'm  a 
'  fool  of  a  bicyclist '  —  only  I  limit  myself  to 
summer  time.  And  here's  another  photo- 


1 82  M.  Coquelin  Cadet 

graph  —  shows  me  when  I  am  being  shaved 

—  funny  idea  is  n't  it?     But  I  'm  done  with 
all  that  programme  now  —  I  shave  myself 
with    that  new    American    machine — it's 
superb. 

"  Look  at  that  painting  over  there.  Can 
you  see  it?  Shows  me  as  Isidore  in  '  le 
Testament  de  Cesar  Girodot, '  my  favorite 
role.  Here's  a  picture  of  me  in  '  1  'Ami 
Fritz  '  —  the  role  that  made  me  societaire. 
Yes,  of  course,  I'm  decorated  —  we  all  are 
in  France.  A  young  woman  was  saying  to 
me  the  other  day:  'A  man  without  a 
decoration  is  like  a  woman  without  child- 
ren. '  Makes  one  laugh,  does  n't  it? 

"  That  big  bust  of  myself  on  the  mantel 
is  Falguiere's  —  and  here  's  a  curious  thing 
by  Rodin  —  made  out  of  some  strange  sort 
of  wood.  Gambetta  in  the  corner  —  yes  —  I 
like  that  bust  because  it  shows  him  as  a 
man,  not  as  a  statesman.  I  knew  him  well 

—  intimately.     Here's   his   photograph  — 
can  you  see  the  inscription? — A   Coquelin 
printemps  —  Rire   et  bien   dire?     O,    I'm    a 

republican  —  a  moderate  republican  —  not  a 
crank  about  it,  you  know." 


M.  Coquelin  Cadet  183 

Tapestries,  potte-ry,  faience,  ceramics, 
sculptures,  tableaux  —  all  greet  the  visitor 
in  the  bachelor-home  of  our  transient  host. 
Above  all,  masks  abound.  One  of  the 
windows  is  painted  with  masks  for  its  sub- 
ject. On  one  pane  is  a  picture  of  Coquelin 
Aine  with  the  words  in  French:  "  Prayer 
of  Mascarille:  I  will  Tear  my  son  in  thy 
cult,  O  Moliere."  On  the  opposite  pane  is 
M.  Cadet:  "The  Gospel  according  to 
Pirouette:  Suffer  little  monologues  to  come 
unto  me." 

Thus  M.  Coquelin  Cadet  bustles  about  in 
an  echoless  way  and  chats  among  his  house- 
hold gods.  These  gods  abundantly  repre- 
sent him  as  a  monologuiste  in  salons, 
and  in  the  clouds  among  the  angels,  and 
with  the  Gallic  cock  crowing  out  of  the  top 
of  his  head — Coq-Coquelin.  And,  every- 
where—  whether  in  flesh,  oils,  marble  or 
bronze  —  he  is  always  laughing  and  obeying 
the  dictum  of  Rabelais :  "  To  laugh  is  to  be 
truly  a  man." 

In  this  manner,  this  green,  humble 
baker's  son  of  Boulogne  —  smiling,  open, 
generous  to  a  fault — has  made  his  way  to 


184  M.  Coquelin  Cadet 

fame  in  the  great  world  of  Paris  by  display- 
ing the  vis  comica  with  all  the  erudition  of 
exhaustless  detail  and  with  all  the  exact- 
ness of  a  variety  true  alike  to  tradition  and 
to  real  life  —  inimitable,  indescribable. 
Sully  Prudhomme  sings  of  him  in  a  sonnet: 

Quel  bonheur!  n'est-ce-pas?  de  reveiller  encore, 
En  1'honneur  des  aieux,  dans  le  rire  gaulois 
La  gaite  du  bon  sens  qu'un  beau  verbe  decore ! 

Such  is  the  most  famous  monologist  in 
all  Paris  —  such  is  the  funniest  man  in  all 
France  —  this  son  of  Villon  and  Rabelais, 
of  Moliere  and  Boursault,  of  Beaumarchais 
and  Beranger! 


Mademoiselle  Reichenberg 


Mademoiselle  Reichenberg 

Incomparably  the  greatest  ingenue  of  our 
epoch!  In  1868  she  made  her  de"but  at  the 
Theatre  Francais  as  the  Agnes  of  Moliere, 
and  since  that  time  —  for  thirty  years  —  she 
has  been  conspicuously  on  the  carpet  in 
Paris. 

The  French,  from  Theophile  Gautier 
down  to  the  public  of  our  day,  have  been 
completely  captivated  by  her.  She  is  the 
only  actress  in  the  Rue  Richelieu  who  is 
always  applauded  when  she  enters  the  stage 
for  the  first  time  of  an  evening.  The  reason 
is  that  she  is  not  only  the  doyenne,  but  is 
also  the  most  popular  actress  there,  to  use 
the  word  popular  in  its  most  popular  sense. 

Mademoiselle  Reichenberg  has  been,  is, 
and  ever  will  be  nothing  but  a  young  girl 
—  the  ideal  ingtnue  personified,  incarnate. 
She  has  a  girl's  voice,  a  girl's  laugh,  a  girl's 
gesture,  a  girl's  disposition  and  ways.  The 
187 


1 88      Mademoiselle  Reichenberg 

Parisians  say  that  she  is,  on  the  stage,  la 
perfection  mtme,  for  she  is  so  natural  in 
her  roles  that  she  seems  to  improvise  them, 
and  then,  too,  she  has  in  a  supreme  degree 
what  French  actors  call  "style." 

She  delights  the  Parisians  whether  she 
plays  the  traditional  —  classic  —  ingenue,  or 
impersonates  the  modern,  half-freed  French 
miss  who  is  capable  of  piquant  enterprises 
under  the  demi-frozen  guise  of  icy  timidity 
and  innocence. 

I  have  seen  Mademoiselle  Reichenberg 
in,  I  suppose,  twenty-five  roles,  and  if  I 
had  to  choose  among  them,  I  should  choose 
her  Agnes  in  "  1' Ecole  des  femmes." 
Here  she  represents  tradition,  nature,  art, 
in  an  irreproachable  fashion.  You  may 
scrutinize  her  in  this  part  as  severely  as 
you  please  with  your  lorgnette,  and  you 
will  find  the  role  impeccable  in  its  ingenue 
timidity,  fright,  naivete,  correct  spontane- 
ity. Here,  to  paraphrase  a  familiar  line  — 
Ses  nonchalances  sont  les  plus  grands  artifices. 

As  Marianne  in  "  1  'Avare  "  and  in  "  Tar- 
tuff  e,"  she  has  nothing  to  do.  In  general 
her  roles  are  small,  the  ingenue  being  com- 


Mademoiselle  Reichenberg     180 

O  7 

paratively  an  effaced,  inactive  creature  on 
parade  without  initiative  or  intrigue. 

In  modern  comedy,  her  most  popular 
role  is  that  of  the  young  wife  in  "  le  Monde 
ou  1'on  s'ennuie. "  She  has  quite  a  chain 
of  acting  in  "  le  Due  Job,"  for  there  she  is 
a  kind  of  free  and  enterprising  American 
maid.  Her  delicious  girlish  witchery  in 
"  Faute  de  s'entendre  "  is  the  sole  excuse 
for  this  one-act  play.  In  this  part  she  is, 
as  it  were,  an  ingenue  in  action  —  sportive, 
restless,  full  of  pranks,  crying,  laughing. 

Mademoiselle  Reichenberg  is  —  to  vary 
the  figure  —  the  nightingale  of  the  Come'die 
Francaise.  First,  because  of  her  birdlike- 
ness;  second,  because  of  her  voice.  She 
is  a  bird  in  flight  —  ever  flitting,  fleeing, 
skimming  away.  Always  just  disappearing 
or  having  just  disappeared,  she  is  never  at 
home  nor  in  her  loge.  Even  at  the  rehears- 
als she  rarely  fails  to  be  lamentably  behind 
time  and  to  cause  her  fellow-players  to 
keep  exclaiming  for  an  hour  or  two,  "Where 
is  the  little  doyenne?  Mon  Dieu,  how  she 
makes  us  wait!  —  she  is  never  on  time!" 
At  her  young  girls'  class  of  recitation  in 


190     Mademoiselle  Reichenberg 

the  Faubourg  St.  Honore",  where  she  is  sup- 
posed to  give  a  lesson  of  recital  each  week 
during  the  season,  she  is  usually  conspicuous 
by  her  tardiness  or  absence.  Only  when 
she  plays  before  the  footlights  is  she  sure 
to  halt  in  a  fixed  spot  at  a  fixed  hour. 

She  pretends  to  live  in  a  certain  modest 
little  villa  in  the  Villa  Said.  A  villa  in  a 
villa?  The  Villa  Sai'd  is  almost  anything 
but  a  villa.  It  is  a  tiny  by-way  near  where 
the  Avenue  du  Bois  de  Boulogne  enters  the 
Bois.  It  is  a  short  alley,  and  is  lined  with 
small,  simple,  one-story  hotels,  all  painted 
a  lead  color.  At  No.  21  is  the  minuscule 
hotel  of  Mademoiselle  Reichenberg. 

It  is  the  house  of  a  little  girl  —  a  place 
where  a  lass  might  be  playing  at  living. 
If  you  should  ring  at  the  entrance,  perhaps 
a  verdant  English  maid  would  appear  on 
the  scene,  and  say  in  response  to  your 
inquiry :  Madame  est  en  ville  avec  son  fille 
(sic).  The  baby  house  is  absolutely  un- 
pretending, with  plain  old  tapestries  on  the 
small  walls,  and  yellow  silk  hung  over  the 
microscopic  doors.  It  is  by  no  means  rich 
in  bric-a-brac  or  furnishings. 


Mademoiselle  Reichenberg     191 

Her  fage,  by  contrast,  is  a  beautiful  niche 
which  has  often  been  described,  for,  except 
that  of  Mademoiselle  Ludwig,  it  is  the  only 
ravishing  nook  at  the  Fran^ais.  It  is  com- 
posed of  three  bits  of  rooms  hung  in  cherry 
plush.  Its  walls  are  covered  with  aqua- 
relles and  souvenirs  of  artists  well  known 
to  the  world. 

One  of  the  most  interesting  of  these 
objects  of  art  is  an  aquarelle,  in  the  form 
of  a  fan,  representing  three  mice  trotting 
about  on  an  ear  of  corn  —  an  allusion  to  a 
comedy  of  M.  Pailleron.  The  dedication 
on  the  fan  is  in  the  handwriting  of  Theo- 
dore de  Banville: 

Reichenberg  de  tant  d'or  coiffee, 

Par  son  babil  charme  Paris. 
Car  c'est  une  petite  fee, 

Mignonne  comme  une  souris. 
Nov.  1889. 

True  to  her  flitting,  bird-like  nature, 
Mademoiselle  Reichenberg  has  no  fixed 
country  haunt,  and  never  leaves  Paris  un- 
less she  is  to  appear  on  the  boards.  If  you 
chance  to  see  her  of  a  morning  on  the  plage 
at  some  French  sea  town,  you  may  know 


192     Mademoiselle  Reichenberg 

that  she  is  to  play  at  the  municipal  theatre 
that  night.  If  she  goes  to  Belgium  or 
Holland  or  out  into  provincial  France,  her 
flight  is  only  a  professional  one. 

But  she  is  not  wholly  invisible  off  the 
stage  in  Paris.  Her  admirers  there  catch 
a  glimpse  of  her  now  and  then  at  the  Cafe" 
de  la  Regence.  This  is  the  favorite  cafe 
resort  for  the  players  at  the  Francais 
because  it  is  convenient  to  their  theatre. 
Several  of  them  usually  drop  in  there  for 
an  aperitif  about  five  o'clock.  Joliet  is 
sure  to  come  in  for  a  noisy  game  of  chess, 
and  Coquelin  Cadet  is  apt  to  bustle  in  for 
dinner. 

One  day  when  playing  chess  there,  I 
chanced  to  glance  through  the  glass  parti- 
tion which  separates  the  in-door  section 
of  the  caf£  from  the  outdoor  part.  To  my 
surprise,  I  spied  Mademoiselle  Reichen- 
berg's  head,  with  its  bird-winged  hat,  bob- 
bing up  and  down  and  back  and  forth.  She 
was  charmingly  engaged  in  a  breezy  con- 
versation with  a  friend.  She  seemed  a 
human  nightingale  in  daytime. 

Ever  smiling,  laughing,  her  face  is  never 


Mademoiselle  Reichenberg     193 

in  repose  because  it  seems  happily  to  reflect 
an  innocent  girl's  conscience  and  a  bird's 
playful  irresponsibilities. 

Being  such  a  young  ornithologic  creature, 
Mademoiselle  Reichenberg  has  difficulty  in 
making  anyone  believe  that  she  is  serious 
whenever  she  wishes  to  be  so.  A  case  in 
point  was  her  attempt  in  1893  to  force  the 
official  withdrawal  of  M.  Claretie,  the 
amiable  and  excellent  administrateur  of  the 
Theatre  Francais.  She  really  meant  to  be 
very  angry  and  formidable,  and  declared 
that  either  he  must  resign,  or  she  would. 
But  the  Paris  journalists  gaily  treated  it  as 
if  it  were  a  quarrel  in  a  bird-cage,  and  de- 
scribed the  petite  doyenne  as  doubling  up  her 
pretty  little  fists  and  ruffling  her  dainty 
feathers  as  if  she  thought  she  was  in  a 
dreadfully  pugnacious  displeasure.  All 
Paris  laughed,  and,  of  course,  she  finally 
began  laughing,  and  it  ended  generally  in  a 
sweet  and  blithesome  twittering. 

Her  nightingale  voice  is  an  exquisite 
freak  of  nature.  Pages  have  been  written 
about  its  pure,  crystal  notes,  and  its  ingenue 
qualities.  It  is  the  voice  of  some  joyous 


194      Mademoiselle  Reichenberg 

and  pearl-throated  bird.  To  me,  it  suggests 
pearl  rather  than  crystal.  It  is  neither 
sensuous  nor  pathetic.  The  tones  are  so 
delicate  and  timid  that  one  fears  he  is  not 
going  to  hear  the  sentence  finished ;  and 
yet  they  are  so  distinct,  certain,  precise,  so 
clear  and  chaste,  that  you  never  miss  an 
intonation  —  and  this  cannot  be  said  of  all 
the  actresses  at  the  Comedie-Frangaise. 

Her  voice  delights  the  hearer  because  he 
never  knows  what  intonation  or  modulation 
is  coming  next.  Take  the  word  Monsieur, 
for  instance.  She  pronounces  it  in  a  score 
of  fascinating  ways.  Sometimes  it  is  the 
piquantly  balanced  French  monotone.  Fre- 
quently it  soars  aloft,  and  descends  in  all 
the  dainty  chromatics  of  a  complete  vocal 
curve.  And  again,  the  last  syllable  often 
mounts  in  a  delicious  musical  flight,  and  is 
suddenly  lost  in  airy  distances.  The  true 
charm  of  her  voice  is  that  she  seems  to 
have  no  control  over  it.  Like  a  bird's 
song,  it  is  instinct  with  separate  life,  and, 
always  sure  of  itself,  it  disports  with  cap- 
tivating faultlessness. 

Mademoiselle  Reichenberg  is  —  to  repeat 


Mademoiselle  Reichenberg 

the  phrase  —  the  most  famous  and  birdlike 
ingenue  in  Paris.  She  is  the  incarnation  of 
all  that  is  tiny,  flitting,  airy.  She  is  delight- 
fully at  large  and  unconfined  in  the  smallest 
of  environments. 


Yvette   Guilbert 


Yvette  Guilbert 

You  know  Yvette's  history.  Here  it  is  in 
a  word.  She  was  a  salesgirl  a  few  years 
ago.  She  was  crazy  to  go  on  the  stage. 
She  had  always  heard  of  Sarah  Bernhardt, 
and  finally  went  one  evening  with  her  cousin 
(also  a  young  woman)  to  see  Sarah  play  at 
the  Porte  St.  Martin.  They  were  so  excited 
that  they  plumped  into  their  seats  without 
buying  a  programme.  Yvette  was  aston- 
ished at  Sarah's  poor  acting.  Was  it  pos- 
sible the  grand  Sarah  could  not  do  better 
than  that?  Yvette  began  making  comments 
of  dissatisfaction  and  criticisms  of  disgust. 
At  length  her  cousin  procured  a  programme 
and  exclaimed:  "Why,  it  isn't  Sarah  at  all 
—  there's  a  substitute  this  evening!  " 

Yvette  was  grievously  disappointed,  for 

she  had  to  count  the  sous  in  those  days, 

and  that  night  her  money  and  trouble  had 

gone  for  nothing.     She  remained,  however, 

199 


2oo  Yvette  Guilbert 

and  presently  a  gentleman  next  her, 
interested  in  her  lively  remarks  about 
the  acting,  asked  her  if  she  was  an  actress, 
for  he  said  her  observations  were  sensible 
and  apropos.  "Why,  no,"  she  replied, 
"  but  I'm  dying  to  be  on  the  boards,  and  I 
don't  know  how  to  go  about  it."  "You 
want  to  go  on  the  boards  —  you  are  alone?" 
"  O,  monsieur,  excuse  me  —  I  live  with  my 
family — a  correct  life  —  it's  an  honest 
ambition. "  He  wrote  on  his  card  the  name 
of  an  actor  at  the  Gymnase,  and  advised 
Yvette  to  see  him  and  get  his  opinion  and 
advice.  The  card  showed  that  its  owner 
was  a  journalist  connected  with  a  prominent 
Paris  paper.  She  never  saw  him  again. 
She  called  on  the  actor,  took  lessons,  tried 
the  theatre  at  a  salary  of  two  hundred  francs 
a  month,  and  abandoned  it  for  the  cafe- 
concert. 

That  was  in  1890.  Now  she  is  Yvette 
Guilbert.  Now  she  is  the  Zola  of  the 
French  concert  hall! 

She  is  a  part  of  the  great  naturalistic 
school  —  a  sister  of  Flaubert,  of  Maupas- 
sant, of  the  author  of  the  Rougon-Macquart. 


Yvette  Guilbert  201 

She  is  the  first  of  the  realistic  song  reci- 
ters—  first  in  point  of  time,  and  first  in 
that  she  has  no  second,  third  or  fourth. 

Fancy  M.  Zola  a  woman,  his  hair  dyed  a 
fierce,  ferruginous  blond,  his  short-sleeved 
arms  rammed  into  long  black  gloves,  and 
his  tuneless  organ  of  speech  intoning 
rhymed  epitomes  of  his  novels  —  that's 
Yvette !  Still  we  ask,  how  does  it  happen 
that  a  woman  who  is  not  pretty,  who  wears 
a  plain  garb,  who  has  no  voice,  who  makes 
no  gestures  with  arms  nor  movements  of 
legs,  and  who  simply  stands  on  a  little 
stage  for  twenty  minutes  each  evening 
and  recites  four  or  five  songs  —  how  does  it 
happen  that  she  earns  24,000  francs  a  month 
even  in  Paris? 

Eh  Men!  Yvette  will  explain  it  to  you  in 
the  following  way,  and  if  you  "do  not  under- 
stand French,  she  will  explain  it  in  English, 
for  she  speaks  English  as  glibly  as  a  conver- 
sation book. 

"In  the  first  place,  you  see,  I  've  got  a 
good  head — I'm  intelligent  —  that 's  the 
basis  of  my  success.  I  mean  I  'm  not  look- 
ing for  a  husband  or  a  chance  to  flirt  or 


2O2  Yvette  Guilbert 

trying  to  go  on  the  comedy  stage.  I  know 
I  'm  not  handsome,  and  I  attend  strictly  to 
my  business  —  to  my  art. 

"Then  I  observe  the  world  as  it  is,  and 
I  put  what  I  see  in  my  songs  just  as  I  see 
it.  No  cafe  singer  ever  did  that  before  my 
time.  They  were  all  singing  '  My  cousin 
embraced  me,'  and  such  pretty  nonsense. 
They  were  not  true  to  the  great,  broad  life 
as  the  mass  of  people  live  it  from  day  to 
day.  'Oh,  but  that' s  brutality — like  the 
realists,'  you  say.  Ah!  pardon!  no!  —  I 
save  the  brutality  of  it  by  my  irony —  it 's 
bitter,  severe,  my  irony,  yet  it  gives  a  twang 
that  makes  one  forget  the  dregs. 

"Still,  you  must  not  only  be  intelligent 
to  be  a  cafe"  singer  —  you  must  have  esprit 
—  that'  s  what  I  've  always  had.  When  I 
was  young,  my  comrades  were  always  say- 
ing, 'That  Yvette  —  it 's  amazing  —  what 
espritT  There  are  plenty  of  cafe1  singers 
to-day  who  sing  with  intelligence,  but  they 
have  no  native  wit.  I  am  able  to  conceive 
the  point  and  plot  of  my  songs  —  it's  I 
who  find  the  idea  —  and  sometimes  I  put 
them  into  verse  myself,  and  I  nearly  always 


Yvette  Guilbert  203 

compose  the  music.  Awful  hard  work  all 
that  —  I  have  to  think  it  and  live  it. 
Imagine  the  task  of  putting  a  whole  drama 
or  comedy  into  three  stanzas,  making  every 
word  count! 

"And  then,  as  I  said,  I  have  made  cafe 
singing  an  art.  With  me  it  is  not  a  sport,  a 
pastime,  a  means  to  something  else  —  I 
have  developed  it  into  a  serious  art  with 
laws  and  rules.  I  say  to  myself,  '  I  am  in 
it,  and  I  stay  there.'  I've  worked  all 
features  of  it  more  than  anyone.  There  '& 
my  diction.  They  talk  about  diction  being 
a  gift  of  nature.  With  me  it  was  simply 
tenacious  work.  People  have  told  me  that 
no  one,  even  at  the  Theatre  Fran^ais,  has 
such  a  fine  diction  as  I.  And  who,  do  you 
imagine,  was  the  first  one  to  say  that?  Max 
Nordau. 

"You  see,  too,  that  there  are  all  kinds  of 
songs  in  my  repertory  —  sad  songs,  dra- 
matic songs,  '  shocking '  songs,  chaste 
songs,  songs  of  the  people,  of  the  boule- 
vards, of  the  rich  middle  class.  I  can  sing 
patriotic  songs  —  anything.  My  dra- 
matic songs  —  I  can  make  an  audience 


204  Yvette  Guilbert 

weep    with    some    of    them.      Tenez!    one 
song,  I  cried  all  the  time  I  was  learning  it 

—  three    months.      My  '  shocking  '    songs 

—  it'  s  only  the  imbeciles  who  say  that  my 
songs  are  '  shocking  '  —  they  do  n't  make  a 
distinction  —  they  forget  the  innocent  songs 
that  I  sing  for  young  girls." 

And  Mademoiselle  Yvette's  pretty  choc- 
olate eyes  will  glisten  at  you  clearly  and 
steadily,  and  she  will  spring  lightly  and 
nervously  to  and  fro  on  her  couch,  as  she 
talks  of  these  things  in  her  loyal,  earnest 
way. 

She  dreaded  her  trip  to  America  —  she 
would  never,  never  have  gone  there  if  the 
offer  had  not  been  so  magnificent.  She 
was  afraid  of  the  Americans.  She  had 
heard  that  they  do  not  care  for  a  woman  on 
the  stage  unless  she  has  fabulous  toilets 
and  a  jeweler's-window  display  of  pre- 
cious stones.  She  had  exclaimed  to  her- 
self before  going:  "  O,  how  they'll  be 
disappointed  in  me  —  they'll  say  'she's 
got  no  dresses  —  no  diamonds  —  don't 
dance  —  she's  not  good-looking.'  I'm 


Yvette  Guilbert  205 

paid  such  a  big  sum  for  coming,  they'  11 
naturally  expect  me  to  be  more  than  a 
Liane  de  Pougy  for  beauty — that  I'll 
surely  do  something  undoable  —  turn  myself 
inside  out  probably.  It  's  horrible  to  think 
how  they  '11  abuse  me  when  they  find  I  only 
recite  little  realistic  songs  on  the  rigid  lines 
of  my  realistic  art." 

Indeed,  one  must  not  forget  that  Yvette's 
plain  gowns  and  simple,  severe  deportment 
on  the  stage  are  required  by  her  Zolaistic 
repertory:  that  even  her  black  gloves  are 
symbolic  of  the  sinful,  brutal,  suffering, 
earthly  life  of  which  she  sings,  and  of  which 
Forain  makes  sketches. 

It  is  to  be  noted  that  Yvette's  audiences 
in  Paris  are  of  the  upper  classes —  the  beau 
monde.  Last  night,  for  instance,  the  Bar- 
oness Rothschild,  the  Duchess  of  Ferrara 
and  such  aristocrats  were  listening  to  her; 
to-night  the  diplomatic  corps  will  be  present. 
She  twists  a  wry  face  at  this,  because  there 
is  more  money  in  popular  audiences.  The 
masses  swell  the  receipts.  Of  course  a 
person  who,  like  Yvette,  merely  earns 


206  Yvette  Guilbert 

24,000  francs  a  month,  has  a  right  to  com- 
plain of  such  impecunious  audiences  as  the 
Rothschilds  and  the  Hirsches. 

She  has  always  had  the  press  warm  in 
her  favor  in  Paris,  for  she  has  supplied  a 
need  created  by  the  great  naturalistic 
school.  She  belongs  to  her  day  and  gen- 
eration, and  has  sufficient  brains  and  energy 
to  march  along  her  path  with  the  leaders  of 
this  mighty  literary  movement.  She  was 
clever  enough  to  base  her  art  directly  on  life 
itself  just  at  the  time  when  the  depravity  and 
decadence  of  naturalism  seemed  to  fill  the 
very  air  with  their  manifestations. 

To  her,  there  is  a  profound  philosophy 
underlying  her  whole  list  of  songs.  She 
cannot  define  or  discuss  this  philosophy,  for 
she  never  was  a  student  at  the  Sorbonne; 
still  she  feels  it,  and  means  that  her  irony 
should  be  directed  at  the  wicked  and  the 
fools. 

There  is  one  thing  in  which  she  differs 
from  her  naturalistic  colleagues.  She  is 
not  a  pessimist.  She  believes  that  the 
world  is  growing  better  and  that  the  future 
is  full  of  hope.  So  she  lives,  not  in  a 


Yvette  Guilbert  207 

gloomy  and  misanthropic  abode,  but  in  a 
bright,  airy,  sun-lighted  apartment,  where 
countless  mirrors  and  glass  doors  idealize 
the  surroundings,  and  the  furniture  and 
furnishings  are  light  and  cheerful.  She 
realizes  that  she  has  been  treated  well;  she 
always  lends  a  helping  hand ;  she  has  not  an 
enemy  in  Paris.  If  Thackeray  were  alive, 
he  would  perhaps  epitomize  it  all  by  re- 
marking that  Yvette  is  a  "brick." 

Nevertheless,  we  must  not  forget  that  her 
repertory  is  not  "for  young  girls. "  Some 
of  her  songs  would,  as  the  French  say, 
"  knock  the  legs  out  from  under  "  even  one 
of  Zola's  peasants.  It  is  not  Yvette's 
fault,  in  the  last  analysis.  It  is  more  the 
fault  of  the  best  classes  of  society  who, 
despite  their  wealth,  education,  refinement 
and  ideal  opportunities,  throng  to  hear  her, 
and  crave  her  feast  of  hard  or  vulgar  real- 
ism. 


M.  Bouguereau 


M.  Bouguereau 

In  his  Studio 

A  short,  thick-set  man  of  over  seventy 
winters,  with  small  gray  eyes  that  twinkle 
fiercely  when  he  is  excited.  His  frowzy 
beard  hedges  in  a  kind  face.  His  clothes 
are  cheap,  rough-textured,  warm.  He  looks 
and  acts  like  a  farmer,  not  a  painter  of 
virgins.  His  rustic  hands  pasture  nervously 
around  the  buttons  and  in  the  pockets  of 
his  coat.  You  would  imagine  that  he  had 
just  brought  a  load  of  wood  into  town.  At 
any  rate  you  would  suppose  that  were  he  in- 
deed an  artist,  his  subjects  would  be  still  life, 
substantial  realities — meats,  cheeses,  cat- 
tle, hogs,  sheep  —  not  fragile,  imponder- 
able idealities,  not  dream-realms  of  candied 
sweetness  and  emasculated  beauty. 

He  says  little,  guarding  something  of  a 
good-natured,  bucolic  silence.  After  a 
while  he  clumsily  lights  a  cigarette  which 

211 


212  M.  Bouguereau 

he  happens  to  find  in  his  clothing.  It  does 
not  occur  to  him  to  offer  chairs  to  guests  : 
he  keeps  on  his  feet  with  every  one  else, 
and  ambles  about  in  an  awkward,  unfamiliar 
way,  as  if  he  hardly  knew  the  geography 
of  his  atelier.  He  does  not  articulate  the 
word  Out:  he  simply  nods  and  gives  grunts 
of  assent. 

Nothing  does  he  but  paint  from  dawn 
until  eve,  winter  and  summer.  Painting  is 
his  society,  theatre,  vacation.  His  can- 
vases are  his  domestic  pets.  In  becoming 
a  master  —  in  preparing  to  create  a  whole 
world  of  Bouguereau  unreality  —  this  gentle 
woodman  starved  in  Paris  in  the  approved 
art-student  style.  Often  his  food  for  twenty- 
four  hours  cost  him  less  than  five  sous. 
Fortunately  he  was  blessed  with  a  rugged 
bark  constitution,  and  survived.  Nowa- 
days he  shrugs  his  thrifty  shoulders  at  the 
memory  of  that  emaciating  epoch,  for  his 
annual  revenues  are  immense:  his  virgins 
sell  for  any  price  he  lays  on  their  heads. 
His  house  in  the  Rue  Notre  Dame  des 
Champs  is  commodious  and  commanding. 

Well  known  is  he  in  Paris  for   his  kind- 


M.  Bouguereau  213 

ness  and  good-will.  Many  an  artist  owes 
a  "  lift"  to  "old  Bouguereau,"  as  he  is 
familiarly  called  along  the  Boulevard  Mont- 
parnasse.  He  will  go  out  of  his  way  to 
help  strugglers.  And  yet  so  fierce  are  the 
wars  over  new  movements  and  art  prin- 
ciples, that  les  jeunes  affect  to  hate  the 
sight  of  the  "old  man"  and  to  despise  his 
confectionery  wares.  It  is  astonishing 
how  much  bile  and  causticity  one  of  Bou- 
guereau's  pictures,  with  its  chromo  inno- 
cence and  dainty-toned  charm,  will  excite 
in  a  young  fellow  of  the  "  new  school." 

And  when,  in  turn,  you  ask  M.  Bou- 
guereau what  he  thinks  of  aeration  in 
painting,  he  will  crudely  take  his  cigarette 
from  his  mouth,  try  to  throw  back  his 
shoulders,  swell  out  his  capacious  thick- 
waistedness,  look  you  ominously  in  the  eye, 
and  say  with  heavy  sighs  of  suppressed 
agitation :  Monsieur,  tout  fa  —  c'est  la  blague! 

If  you  were  to  step  into  the  little  glass- 
covered  side  room  where  he  works,  you 
would  be  apt  to  discover  some  very  youth- 
ful, peach-cheeked  model  sitting  in  the 
nymphic  atmosphere  of  a  hot  stove.  The 


214  M.  Bouguereau 

hardest  task  of  his  life  is  not  to  paint,  but 
to  find  girls  with  pretty  faces  and  heads  — 
they  are  so  rare.  tHis  faces  must  have  in- 
stead of  the  dead,  white,  masculine  color 
that  M.  Henner  loves,  a  delicately  suffused 
pink  tint  —  that  unsexed  tint  which  M. 
Bouguereau  has  made  his  own. 


M.  Henner 


M.  Henner 

A  simple,  fatherly  old  man,  with  a  slouch 
cap,  and  a  blouse  as  daubed  with  paint  as  a 
palette.  His  studio  is  in  a  great,  gloomy 
apartment  house,  and  overlooks  the  Place 
Pigalle.  He  enters  and  emerges  from  his 
mystic  den  like  some  solitary  figure  in  a 
child's  story  of  robbers.  The  atelier  is 
bathed  in  a  Rembrandt  chiaroscuro.  It  is 
widened  and  heightened  by  dark,  inchoate, 
dust-covered  perspectives  of  forgotten  pict- 
ure frames,  old  reliquaries  mounting  loftily 
on  each  other,  and  similar  disordered  gods 
of  a  neglected  household  solitude. 

On  all  sides  of  us  here  are  red-haired, 
hair -restorative  virgins  iron -rusting  in 
languor. 

Now  and   then   the    lovable  old  master 

gets  up,  searches   among  his  rubbish  and 

obscurities  for  some  ferociously  graceful, 

iron-rusted   maid.      He  puts  her  across  a 

217 


2i8  M.  Henner 

chair  in  the  dimly  suffusing  light,  retreats 
behind  her,  meekly  casts  his  eyes  down  at 
the  floor,  and  says  at  intervals:  "A  pretty 
tone,  is  n't  it?  " — "Ah,  a  good  color —  very 
good!" — while  our  eyes  caress  the  ferru- 
ginous insouciance  of  his  wax  models.  He 
acts  like  an  embarrassed  boy  showing  his 
first  attempt  at  drawing. 

He  talks  of  everything  in  the  kindest 
way.  "I  like  Italian  girls  best  for  models. 
They  often  have  red  hair,  or  can  dye  it  red 
at  any  rate.  I  find  them  right  here  in  the 
Place  Pigalle.  Monday  mornings,  about 
ten  o'clock,  all  the  models  in  this  part  of 
town  collect  in  this  square.  They  are  ready 
to  be  hired  for  the  week.  It  is  difficult  to 
find  good  complexions.  I  need  solid  tones 
—  a  clear,  pale,  even  color — no  freckled 
or  cut-up  tints  —  it  must  be  mat." 

"  It  is  not  true  that  the  nude  has  never  been 
painted  outdoors  until  to-day.  Forty  years 
ago  I  used  to  paint  the  nude  in  my  little 
garden  in  Rome.  I  suppose  people  say 
that  my  pictures  in  which  all  the  light  is 
centered  on  a  naked  figure  in  a  dark  land- 
scape, are  not  true  to  nature.  But  I 


M.  Henner  219 

have  seen  this  effect  in  nature.  Nature's 
light  on  the  flesh  under  such  conditions  is 
more  brilliant  —  splendid  —  than  you  would 
ever  imagine.  I  once  saw  a  woman  bath- 
ing at  twilight  in  Corot's  pond  at  Ville 
d'Avray.  Every  ray  of  luminosity  was 
concentrated  on  her.  She  filled  the  whole 
space.  She  literally  gleamed  forth  in  the 
vague  evening  scene. 

"  Leonardo  has  always  been  my  greatest 
inspirer.  Rembrandt  is  not  a  favorite  of 
mine  because  he  did  not  try  for  charm,  as 
a  rule.  For  me,  the  one  thing  in  painting 
is  charm.  I  put  Proud'hon  far  above  all 
the  later  painters  [emphatic].  His  portrait 
of  Madame  Jarre  is  the  finest  of  all  modern 
canvases  in  the  Louvre.  When  I  first  came 
to  Paris, —  in  1848, —  that  painting  struck 
me  at  once.  It  has  been  my  ambition 
all  my  life  to  do  work  like  that.  Still,  a 
painter  must  have  personality,  individuality. 
That  is  the  trouble  with  the  picture  exhibi- 
tions: Everyone  tries  to  paint  too  much 
like  the  others." 

Puvis  de  Chavannes  lives  right  across  the 
hallway  from  Henner.  These  two  mystic 


•22O  M.  Henner 

idealists  come  from  Eastern  France  —  that 
mystic  side  of  Gaul  which  borders  along 
the  misty  heights  of  Switzerland  and  along 
the  obscure  depths  of  German  forests.  It 
is  the  Black  Forest  that  is  reflected  in  the 
backgrounds  of  Henner.  He  knows  and 
loves  it  as  if  it  were  quite  his  native  home. 
Across  its  dark  fringes  and  within  its  black 
confines,  he  tortures  in  epic  grace  his  red- 
haired  Fredegondes,  Brunhildas  and  all  his 
other  favorites  of  the  fierce  Gallic  chieftains 
and  warriors  of  old. 


M.  Massenet 


M.  Massenet 

The  nights  of  "  Le  Cid  "  and  of  "  Le 
Mage  "  were  not  of  the  ever-to-be-remem- 
bered variety.  The  music  was  thin,  the 
epic  dry,  the  mise-en-sdne  anaemic.  One 
was  reminded  of  much  of  Leconte  de  Lisle's 
epopee  —  of  his  favorite  effete  effects  and 
desiccated  grandeur.  At  the  revival  of  "Le 
Cid  "  at  the  Grand  OpeVa  on  a  cold  Janu- 
ary night  a  few  years  ago,  Madame  Caron 
sang  in  her  arid  style,  and  Mademoiselle 
Mauri  danced.  Yet  the  Jockey  Club,  be- 
tween the  acts,  smoothed  down  its  scissor- 
tails  with  unusually  perfunctory  solemnness 
in  the  over-heated  marble  couloirs  and 
behind  the  swinging,  silk-velvet  doors.  It 
was  only  a  succes  d'estime. 

M.  Massenet  is,  in  the  Paris  of  our  day, 

the  most  popular  living  French  composer. 

Its  great  world  is  not  acquainted  with  M. 

Saint-Saens,  who  is  half  the  time  far  away 

223 


224  M.  Massenet 

from  France,  and  all  the  time  (according 
to  report)  something  of  an  irritable  bear; 
nor  has  it  scarcely  heard  of  M.  Reyer.  But 
M.  Massenet!  The  word  itself  has  a  sen- 
sational sound  and  bravura.  The  public  is 
familiar  with  this  harmonist  by  sight.  He 
is  in  touch  with  it.  He  is  ambitiously 
accessible  and  pleasant  to  everyone,  and 
knows  how  to  win  the  Parisian  ear.  His 
name  popularizes  a  programme. 

When  a  band  plays  one  of  his  selections 
in  a  Paris  park,  people  nudge  each  other 
and  remark:  "It's  Massenet  now."  If 
you  happen  to  be  under  the  cupola  of  the 
Institute  at  the  annual  exercises  of  award- 
giving  by  the  Beaux-Arts  in  the  presence 
of  many  of  the  famous  artists  and  compos- 
ers of  France,  you  will  perhaps  notice 
that  your  neighbors  passively  designate  all 
the  musicians  except  M.  Massenet,  who, 
by  contrast,  always  excites  their  buoyant 
curiosity — "There's  Massenet  —  there  on 
the  rear  seat  —  do  n't  you  see  him?  " 

What  M.  Thome  is  at  the  little  soirees  of 
Madame  de  la  Grange  in  the  Rue  Condor- 


M.  Massenet  225 

cet,  and  what  Mademoiselle  Chaminade  is 
at  the  modest  "  musicales  "  of  a  certain 
class  of  Americans  back  of  Pare  Monceau, 
M.  Massenet  is  in  a  far  greater  way  in  the 
music  realm  of  All-Paris.  He  has  endowed 
his  country  with  "Manon";  he  has  written 
the  finest  French  airs-de-ballet  since  Delibes; 
and  he  is  a  master  of  the  morceau-de-salon 
type  of  music  —  a  type  which  is,  of  course, 
distinctly  French. 

It  is  at  Menestrals  in  the  Rue  Vivienne, 
the  street  where,  according  to  Abbe"  Pre- 
vost,  Manon  and  her  lover  stayed,  that  M. 
Massenet  has  his  business  office.  Here  he 
is  besieged  by  veiled  ladies  on  mysterious 
Euterpean  missions;  and  by  old  and  young 
men  with  new,  marvelous  methods  of  voice 
training,  some  of  which  claim  the  merit  of 
making  anyone  sing  beautifully  at  the  age 
of  eighty-five.  And  then  there  are  those 
persistent  creatures  who  are  ever  in  pursuit 
of  billets  de  faveur  —  billets  de  la  re"pe"tition 
generale.  O  the  perpetual  requests  for  free 
entry!  They  are  the  bane  of  M.  Massenet's 
life.  I  heard  him  exclaim  one  day  that  he 


226  M.  Massenet 

had  stopped  composing  for  good,  that  he 
had  definitely  ceased  all  work,  that  he  would 
never  again  be  tortured  by  a  rush  for 
tickets  for  a  general  rehearsal.  However, 
it  appeared  afterward  that  he  was  busily 
engaged  in  maturing,  at  that  very  time, 
two  operas  and,  as  usual,  his  varied  balcony- 
garden  blossoms. 

Physically,  M.  Massenet  has  grown  quite 
heavy.  His  hair  is  still  dark  and  still 
brushed  back,  and  his  dark  brown  eyes  are 
still  effaced.  He  has  a  soft  voice,  a  nervous 
confidential  way,  and  feverish,  caressing 
manners  without  grace  or  polish.  He  en- 
courages and  is  enthusiastic  for  you.  Full 
of  optimistic  indulgence,  he  expresses  him- 
self vaguely  in  interested  attitudes  and 
unnourished  gestures. 

M.  Massenet  does  not  pretend  to  voyage 
for  the  sake  of  inspiration.  He  had  trav- 
eled in  Spain,  it  is  true,  before  composing 
"Le  Cid,"  yet  not  for  that  purpose.  It 
takes  him  a  long  time  —  often  ten  years  — 
to  season  any  beflowered  and  perfumed 
wealth  that  may  have  lawned  his  musical 


M.  Massenet  227 

soul  during  a  journey  in  a  distant  land. 
But  some  day  the  public  is  sure  to  be  sup- 
plied with  the  baled  souvenir  of  his  tour  — 
its  math  and  aftermath  bound  into  the  form 
of  an  opera  or  a  series  of  exotic  seines 
pittoresques. 


PRINTED  AT  THE  LAKESIDE  PRESS 

BY  R.  R.  DONNELLEY  AND  SONS  CO 

MDCCCXCVII 


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A     000034460     6 


HOURS  WITH  FAMOUS 

FRISIANS 

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